Gay & Lesbian Books
Deadly Vision
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Manufacturer: Quest
Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: Quest
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $11.22
You Save: $ 5.28 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Quest
Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: Quest
Average Customer Rating:
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Deadly Vision Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781932300963
ISBN: 1932300961
Label: Quest
Manufacturer: Quest
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 220
Publication Date: 2008-01-10
Publisher: Quest
Studio: Quest
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781932300963
ISBN: 1932300961
Label: Quest
Manufacturer: Quest
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 220
Publication Date: 2008-01-10
Publisher: Quest
Studio: Quest
Editorial Review of Deadly Vision
What If You Suddenly Became Psychic and Could Stop Two Cold-Blooded Killers?
What if...No One Believed You?
Small-town single mom Cass D'Angelo's life changes when a thunderstorm sweeps into her small Ohio River town. Cass must venture out in it to hunt for her son, seven-year-old Max. Lightning strikes a tree near her and a branch to the head knocks her unconscious. When Cass awakens a couple days later, she sees into the deepest secrets of those around her. Worse, some teenage girls have gone missing, and Cass sees their grisly fates. The discovery opens the door to a whole new life. The police are suspicious. The press wants to make her a celebrity. And the killers are desperate to know how she found their carefully concealed grave. Cass finds an ally in Dani Westwood, a local reporter. The two women begin to probe into the disappearances/murders and start to forge a romance. When Cass's little boy, Max, disappears, Cass must race against the clock to find him...before it's too late.
Customer Reviews of Deadly Vision
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Midwest Book Review - April 2008
Review: Cass D'Angelo lives a regular life in small town, Ohio, with her seven-year-old son, Max. She works at a popular diner and has little unusual going on in her life except, initially, the lack of a girlfriend. Her whole life changes, however, after being struck on the head during a storm. When she wakes up in the hospital, she discovers that she's acquired psychic powers, specifically the ability to visualize the grisly deaths of local girls who have recently begun disappearing.
The killers are an insane, but handsome, psychopath and his smitten and spectacularly confused girlfriend. We find out very quickly that they worship a devil-like entity, "The Beast," and when they discover that Cass has directed the police to unearth one of their victims, they go after her and her family.
Like Charlaine Harris's Harper Connelly character, Cass D'Angelo is a psychic character who's fascinating to read about. She's thoughtful, smart, and capable. Unlike Harris's character, who travels around to use her gift, Cass is mostly happy and settled in her Ohio home and committed to family, friends, and her community. That makes her deadly visions and horror over the sick murders even more palpable. Everyone is at risk, even her own son.
Reed gives us alternate chapters from the perspective of the twisted killer's girlfriend and of our increasingly-stressed heroine. His secondary characters, particularly Cass's mother and Cass's journalist girlfriend, are lively, interesting, and essential. His use of tone, pacing, and atmosphere is masterful. A natural born storyteller, this author does an excellent job showing Cass's increasing panic in the face of the killers' single-minded murderous intent. With every page, the reader's tension level rises until the wild climax. At times graphic, always descriptive, and endlessly suspenseful, this novel takes you on a rocky ride through horror and anxiety. Will the killers be thwarted? Will Cass live to see another vision? Will she lose the one she loves the most?
Highly recommended for all who enjoy heart-pounding suspense, horror, and good old-fashioned fright within an expertly constructed narrative. ~Lori L. Lake, Midwest Book Review
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: What could be more horrifying?
Review: What could be more horrifying than to have the psychic ability that forces you to witness the events in other people's lives but not be able to find your own son after he is kidnapped? With an intense plot and vivid detailed writing, Rick R. Reed has crafted a compelling, fast-paced thriller that would haunt any parent's nightmares.
www.AllTheseBooks.com
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Psychic Sleuth
Review: Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (2/08)
Rick R. Reed's new novel "Deadly Vision" is another page-turner from this masterly horror writer. The novel opens with Cass, a single mother, who also happens to be a lesbian, simply trying to make a life for herself and her son by working as a waitress in a diner. One day, she gets hit on the head by a tree branch during a storm, and when she wakes up, she begins to see strange visions, which she realizes are related to the recent cases of missing girls within the community. Cass is reluctant to be in the public light, but she knows she must use her knowledge to save lives. She has a difficult time trying to get help from the authorities and media, but eventually, she convinces them and one of the girls' bodies is found. When Cass's name appears in the paper for having helped the media find the missing girl's body, the killer decides he must stop Cass from revealing more. His revenge leads to an exciting showdown.
Unlike many horror, thriller and detective novelists who center the plot around a detective character searching for an unknown killer, Reed eliminates the mystery behind who the murderer is, and instead depicts the killer in alternate chapters. Reed did an exceptional job in his previous novel "IM" of getting into the killer's mind, and by doing so, while the mystery is absent, the excitement and adrenaline flow all the more. In "Deadly Vision" Reed writes in third person, so we do not understand as well what causes the villain, Ian, to act as he does; instead we view the action from the eyes of Ian's girlfriend, Myra. Ian is obviously crazy, talking about how he must sacrifice people to The Beast, yet Reed fully makes the reader understand why Myra remains with Ian for so long, first because he is gorgeous, secondly because he taught her how to lose weight and make herself attractive, and finally out of confused loyalty and eventually fear of Ian. Myra is forced into the role of accomplice to Ian while she continually tries to manipulate him to stop the crimes, and yet helps him out of fear. I personally thought Myra the most developed and interesting character in the novel.
Reed's characters are often homosexual, and in past books his characters' sexual orientation has added to the novels' plots. However, while the back cover includes Lesbian with Fiction/Mystery/Thriller as one of its genres, I didn't see any reason why Cass or Dani, her reporter friend, were depicted as lesbians. It was clear they were going to become a couple, but their sexual orientation was not detailed enough to advance the plot or motivate their actions, unlike the detective in "IM" who is himself homosexual and seeking to save his male lover from a killer bent on murdering gay men.
I would gladly welcome a sequel to "Deadly Vision" where Reed further develops the relationship between Dani and Cass so their sexual orientations are more integrated into the plot. The two women make a great team, and I can definitely see possibilities for further adventures as Cass learns better how to use her psychic abilities. I would also like to know more about what became of Myra. I hope another Rick R. Reed book will soon roll off the presses.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A 'Vision' of Suspense...
Review: Hot on the heels of his enjoyable gay serial killer novel - last year's "IM" - Rick Reed returns with another gripping thriller, "Deadly Vision." Reed is quickly developing his own unique formula that blends suspense, fast-moving narratives, fully-realized gay characters, and a touch of the occult. His seeming bid to become a gay hybrid of James Patterson and Dean Koontz will not be lost on readers with this latest offering.
Cass D'Angelo, single mother to seven-year-old Max, is toiling away as a waitress in a small, depressed river town in Ohio. When Cass goes off after Max when he wanders off one afternoon during a thunderstorm, she runs afoul of a lightning strike and a falling tree limb. She awakens days later in the hospital - relieved to find Max safe - and discovers that the resulting concussion has left her with a newfound psychic ability. Before you can say Psychic Friends Network, Cass receives disturbing images of several local girls gone missing - their grisly fates playing out behind her mind's eye. Fearing more deaths, the reluctant psychic reaches out to the police and to one of the missing girl's parents - all of whom are skeptical. But when the father of a second missing girl begs Cass' help in finding his daughter and her decomposing body is found along the Ohio River banks, Cass finds herself the center of unwanted attention from a pair of devil-worshipping killers desperate to find out how she found their carefully hidden grave. It's here that the story kicks into even higher gear with a kidnapping, a manhunt, and - to a lesser extent - hints of a budding romance with a sympathetic female journalist.
As in "IM," Reed again opts to tell his story through multiple points of view. And, again, it works surprisingly well even when minor characters like Cass' mother get their chance at the storytelling bat. Laying out the actions and motives of your villains for readers is a tricky proposition - give too much and risk predictability at the expense of the suspense. But Reed expertly walks the tightrope between disclosure and omission, crafting passages told from the killers' perspective that are appropriately chilling and give just enough away to readers so that their acquired insight translates into dread when the action switches back to Cass and company. It's foreboding at it s finest with readers left muttering, "If you only knew what I know" at the book itself.
Reed also imbues "Deadly Vision" with a strong sense of setting, creating in Summitville a bleak tableau of working class hardship. One gets a strong sense of inevitability for the fictional denizens of the town, like they surrendered master status of their own destinies somewhere between unplanned pregnancies and factory closings. He nails the idea of familiarity and disconnection as analogous functions of small-town life:
"When Sheryl McKenna's mother opened the door, Cass felt as though she had already seen her. And maybe she had. Summitville was, after all, a small town. She could have passed the tired-looking woman on the street downtown, or served her in the diner. The woman stared at her with bright gray eyes, looking her over as if Cass were something she had discarded in the yard that had managed to make its way back to the porch. Mrs. McKenna was small, with no fat on her bones; she looked almost skeletal. Her skin was weathered, the result of too much sun, too much smoke. Her skin, combined with straw-like bleached blonde hair and hard eyes made her, Cass was sure, look older than her years. She held a cigarette in her hand, and the smell of tobacco smoke came out of the house in a wave when she opened the door."
Unlike "IM," the lesbian romance is relegated to the background here, never even a glimmer of possibility until the third act - and even then it's only alluded to in a near future. This is the novel's only misstep - and a slight one at that - and an area where Reed missed an opportunity for deeper emotional investment in the reporter character of Dani Westwood. The lack of romantic connection to Cass keeps her at arm's length for much of the action, consigning her to stock character status.
The novel's supernatural elements are handled quite well, with Cass' understanding of her precognitive abilities evolving gradually over the course of the book and never coming off as forced or over-the-top. Only toward the end when Cass encounters the spectral vision of one of the victims does one get the sense that they're smack dab in the middle of an episode of "Cold Case" or "The Ghost Whisperer" - and that's either criticism or commendation depending upon your level of tolerance for either of those shows.
The literary equivalent of a hybrid vehicle, "Deadly Vision" powers forward on a combustion of supernatural suspense, murder mystery, and breakneck thriller. With psychics and serial killers rendered with the same deft hand in a propulsive narrative likely to increase respirations, it takes no psychic ability to see that Rick Reed is headed for the top of the suspense class.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Rick R. Reed Is Back With A Vengeance!
Review: Ready for yet another roller coaster ride from one of the most entertaining authors around? BUY THIS BOOK!! It's a heck of a ride.
Enter the world of small town America... a place where life is pretty quiet. Well, usually.
You'll become entrenched in the drama in this well written, taught thriller. At times you'll laugh, cringe, sigh with relief and at times your breath will catch in your throat. Mr. Reed knows just how to grab his audience... where it counts.
If you've never read any of Mr. Reed's books, this is a great one with which to begin. After this page-turner... you'll be wanting more, much more. And he'll never disappoint you. Mr. Reed is one of the best, freshest authors today. You're going to be hooked.
"Deadly Vision" is a great read! Fast paced and full of characters you not only like but actually care about.
Will the killer be stopped in time? ONly one way for you to find out... click on the "Add To Shopping Cart" button now!! Then go and buy his other books. You'll be very glad you did.
Review Summary: Midwest Book Review - April 2008
Review: Cass D'Angelo lives a regular life in small town, Ohio, with her seven-year-old son, Max. She works at a popular diner and has little unusual going on in her life except, initially, the lack of a girlfriend. Her whole life changes, however, after being struck on the head during a storm. When she wakes up in the hospital, she discovers that she's acquired psychic powers, specifically the ability to visualize the grisly deaths of local girls who have recently begun disappearing.
The killers are an insane, but handsome, psychopath and his smitten and spectacularly confused girlfriend. We find out very quickly that they worship a devil-like entity, "The Beast," and when they discover that Cass has directed the police to unearth one of their victims, they go after her and her family.
Like Charlaine Harris's Harper Connelly character, Cass D'Angelo is a psychic character who's fascinating to read about. She's thoughtful, smart, and capable. Unlike Harris's character, who travels around to use her gift, Cass is mostly happy and settled in her Ohio home and committed to family, friends, and her community. That makes her deadly visions and horror over the sick murders even more palpable. Everyone is at risk, even her own son.
Reed gives us alternate chapters from the perspective of the twisted killer's girlfriend and of our increasingly-stressed heroine. His secondary characters, particularly Cass's mother and Cass's journalist girlfriend, are lively, interesting, and essential. His use of tone, pacing, and atmosphere is masterful. A natural born storyteller, this author does an excellent job showing Cass's increasing panic in the face of the killers' single-minded murderous intent. With every page, the reader's tension level rises until the wild climax. At times graphic, always descriptive, and endlessly suspenseful, this novel takes you on a rocky ride through horror and anxiety. Will the killers be thwarted? Will Cass live to see another vision? Will she lose the one she loves the most?
Highly recommended for all who enjoy heart-pounding suspense, horror, and good old-fashioned fright within an expertly constructed narrative. ~Lori L. Lake, Midwest Book Review
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: What could be more horrifying?
Review: What could be more horrifying than to have the psychic ability that forces you to witness the events in other people's lives but not be able to find your own son after he is kidnapped? With an intense plot and vivid detailed writing, Rick R. Reed has crafted a compelling, fast-paced thriller that would haunt any parent's nightmares.
www.AllTheseBooks.com
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Psychic Sleuth
Review: Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (2/08)
Rick R. Reed's new novel "Deadly Vision" is another page-turner from this masterly horror writer. The novel opens with Cass, a single mother, who also happens to be a lesbian, simply trying to make a life for herself and her son by working as a waitress in a diner. One day, she gets hit on the head by a tree branch during a storm, and when she wakes up, she begins to see strange visions, which she realizes are related to the recent cases of missing girls within the community. Cass is reluctant to be in the public light, but she knows she must use her knowledge to save lives. She has a difficult time trying to get help from the authorities and media, but eventually, she convinces them and one of the girls' bodies is found. When Cass's name appears in the paper for having helped the media find the missing girl's body, the killer decides he must stop Cass from revealing more. His revenge leads to an exciting showdown.
Unlike many horror, thriller and detective novelists who center the plot around a detective character searching for an unknown killer, Reed eliminates the mystery behind who the murderer is, and instead depicts the killer in alternate chapters. Reed did an exceptional job in his previous novel "IM" of getting into the killer's mind, and by doing so, while the mystery is absent, the excitement and adrenaline flow all the more. In "Deadly Vision" Reed writes in third person, so we do not understand as well what causes the villain, Ian, to act as he does; instead we view the action from the eyes of Ian's girlfriend, Myra. Ian is obviously crazy, talking about how he must sacrifice people to The Beast, yet Reed fully makes the reader understand why Myra remains with Ian for so long, first because he is gorgeous, secondly because he taught her how to lose weight and make herself attractive, and finally out of confused loyalty and eventually fear of Ian. Myra is forced into the role of accomplice to Ian while she continually tries to manipulate him to stop the crimes, and yet helps him out of fear. I personally thought Myra the most developed and interesting character in the novel.
Reed's characters are often homosexual, and in past books his characters' sexual orientation has added to the novels' plots. However, while the back cover includes Lesbian with Fiction/Mystery/Thriller as one of its genres, I didn't see any reason why Cass or Dani, her reporter friend, were depicted as lesbians. It was clear they were going to become a couple, but their sexual orientation was not detailed enough to advance the plot or motivate their actions, unlike the detective in "IM" who is himself homosexual and seeking to save his male lover from a killer bent on murdering gay men.
I would gladly welcome a sequel to "Deadly Vision" where Reed further develops the relationship between Dani and Cass so their sexual orientations are more integrated into the plot. The two women make a great team, and I can definitely see possibilities for further adventures as Cass learns better how to use her psychic abilities. I would also like to know more about what became of Myra. I hope another Rick R. Reed book will soon roll off the presses.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A 'Vision' of Suspense...
Review: Hot on the heels of his enjoyable gay serial killer novel - last year's "IM" - Rick Reed returns with another gripping thriller, "Deadly Vision." Reed is quickly developing his own unique formula that blends suspense, fast-moving narratives, fully-realized gay characters, and a touch of the occult. His seeming bid to become a gay hybrid of James Patterson and Dean Koontz will not be lost on readers with this latest offering.
Cass D'Angelo, single mother to seven-year-old Max, is toiling away as a waitress in a small, depressed river town in Ohio. When Cass goes off after Max when he wanders off one afternoon during a thunderstorm, she runs afoul of a lightning strike and a falling tree limb. She awakens days later in the hospital - relieved to find Max safe - and discovers that the resulting concussion has left her with a newfound psychic ability. Before you can say Psychic Friends Network, Cass receives disturbing images of several local girls gone missing - their grisly fates playing out behind her mind's eye. Fearing more deaths, the reluctant psychic reaches out to the police and to one of the missing girl's parents - all of whom are skeptical. But when the father of a second missing girl begs Cass' help in finding his daughter and her decomposing body is found along the Ohio River banks, Cass finds herself the center of unwanted attention from a pair of devil-worshipping killers desperate to find out how she found their carefully hidden grave. It's here that the story kicks into even higher gear with a kidnapping, a manhunt, and - to a lesser extent - hints of a budding romance with a sympathetic female journalist.
As in "IM," Reed again opts to tell his story through multiple points of view. And, again, it works surprisingly well even when minor characters like Cass' mother get their chance at the storytelling bat. Laying out the actions and motives of your villains for readers is a tricky proposition - give too much and risk predictability at the expense of the suspense. But Reed expertly walks the tightrope between disclosure and omission, crafting passages told from the killers' perspective that are appropriately chilling and give just enough away to readers so that their acquired insight translates into dread when the action switches back to Cass and company. It's foreboding at it s finest with readers left muttering, "If you only knew what I know" at the book itself.
Reed also imbues "Deadly Vision" with a strong sense of setting, creating in Summitville a bleak tableau of working class hardship. One gets a strong sense of inevitability for the fictional denizens of the town, like they surrendered master status of their own destinies somewhere between unplanned pregnancies and factory closings. He nails the idea of familiarity and disconnection as analogous functions of small-town life:
"When Sheryl McKenna's mother opened the door, Cass felt as though she had already seen her. And maybe she had. Summitville was, after all, a small town. She could have passed the tired-looking woman on the street downtown, or served her in the diner. The woman stared at her with bright gray eyes, looking her over as if Cass were something she had discarded in the yard that had managed to make its way back to the porch. Mrs. McKenna was small, with no fat on her bones; she looked almost skeletal. Her skin was weathered, the result of too much sun, too much smoke. Her skin, combined with straw-like bleached blonde hair and hard eyes made her, Cass was sure, look older than her years. She held a cigarette in her hand, and the smell of tobacco smoke came out of the house in a wave when she opened the door."
Unlike "IM," the lesbian romance is relegated to the background here, never even a glimmer of possibility until the third act - and even then it's only alluded to in a near future. This is the novel's only misstep - and a slight one at that - and an area where Reed missed an opportunity for deeper emotional investment in the reporter character of Dani Westwood. The lack of romantic connection to Cass keeps her at arm's length for much of the action, consigning her to stock character status.
The novel's supernatural elements are handled quite well, with Cass' understanding of her precognitive abilities evolving gradually over the course of the book and never coming off as forced or over-the-top. Only toward the end when Cass encounters the spectral vision of one of the victims does one get the sense that they're smack dab in the middle of an episode of "Cold Case" or "The Ghost Whisperer" - and that's either criticism or commendation depending upon your level of tolerance for either of those shows.
The literary equivalent of a hybrid vehicle, "Deadly Vision" powers forward on a combustion of supernatural suspense, murder mystery, and breakneck thriller. With psychics and serial killers rendered with the same deft hand in a propulsive narrative likely to increase respirations, it takes no psychic ability to see that Rick Reed is headed for the top of the suspense class.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Rick R. Reed Is Back With A Vengeance!
Review: Ready for yet another roller coaster ride from one of the most entertaining authors around? BUY THIS BOOK!! It's a heck of a ride.
Enter the world of small town America... a place where life is pretty quiet. Well, usually.
You'll become entrenched in the drama in this well written, taught thriller. At times you'll laugh, cringe, sigh with relief and at times your breath will catch in your throat. Mr. Reed knows just how to grab his audience... where it counts.
If you've never read any of Mr. Reed's books, this is a great one with which to begin. After this page-turner... you'll be wanting more, much more. And he'll never disappoint you. Mr. Reed is one of the best, freshest authors today. You're going to be hooked.
"Deadly Vision" is a great read! Fast paced and full of characters you not only like but actually care about.
Will the killer be stopped in time? ONly one way for you to find out... click on the "Add To Shopping Cart" button now!! Then go and buy his other books. You'll be very glad you did.