Amy Elwell loved the telephone. At moments of heartbreak and stress, at moments of victory and jubilation, she always found herself on the phone. There were times when the sound of a sympathetic voice late at night had kept her spirit alive. She understood the concept of suicide hotlines, and had… Read full post »

          Amy Elwell was asleep when the phone rang.

          She had started sleeping at odd times, staying up most of the night, dozing in front of sleazy cable movies and infomercials on television; she act… Read full post »

Tom was ready to take his stand at the next electro-shock session, but he got his chance sooner than that, when Henry and two other orderlies arrived the following morning with his medication. Though Tom’s room-mates took their meds without a struggle, Tom’s defiance had sparked their int… Read full post »

        It happened the same way at every meal. Two big patients, both named Larry, both with choppy crew cuts and infected tattoos, would shamble over to the frail, fifty-year-old man's table and steal… Read full post »

On the morning of his third day at the Holden Psychiatric Institute, Tom was taken to see Dr. Leonard Honig. He'd  spent the previous 50 hours sleeping.

          When they had first brought him into the building, bruised and hurting, there'd been a/… Read full post »

Amy Elwell was taken under guard to a Secret Service safe house in the West Eighties, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. The block, a slum area of tenements and wel­fare hotels 30 years before, had been radically gentrified during the last few decades, every brownstone on the block meticulou… Read full post »

“It’s a roach hotel,” said Ira Heller into the phone. “Remember that ad, Mr. Clark? ‘Roaches check in but they don’t check out.’ That’s all you need to know. Leave the details to us. Uh huh. I’m aware of that.… Read full post »

The apartment had been demolished. The furniture was slashed apart, the floor boards levered up, the appliances smashed. The bookshelves were overturned, the cupboards were gaping open, empty. Tom’s first thought was that a bomb had gone off, but this was a meticulous, hand-crafted destruction.… Read full post »

Tom was four minutes late.

     He ran towards the sailboat pond from the south, down Pilgrim Hill. He had started running half way across Madison Avenue after a quick glance at his watch. He could feel panic nibbling at him. He didn’t like the idea of… Read full post »

Ira Heller closed Tom’s spiral bound notebook and whistled softly. He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to ten; that was cutting it close.

      He grabbed the phone and started punching numbers.

      Across the room, flan… Read full post »

3/20 

     I finally know the truth.

          I know what’s happening and I know why. Jim gave me all the answers. Now I just have to write it down exactly as I heard it, one word at a time, and let the truth sin/… Read full post »

3/23

          I don’t believe in ghosts, but this morning made me wonder. I held a letter in my hand, a sheet of paper that solved so many problems at once, and I felt m… Read full post »

Hawaii 5-0 (10:00, Mndays, CBS)is the most surprising new show on television. I dimly remember the original – a blunt and uninspiring police procedural with a palm tree background, shot mostly on sound stages, with its tough guy cop and ho-hum sidekick (“Book &lsquo/… Read full post »

3/15

      I shouldn’t be keeping this journal -- that’s what Jake would say. It’s a liability. It’s potential evidence against me ... and Amy. But I have to do it. I think best with a pen in my hand; it con­nects t… Read full post »

Finishing the last page of Michael Connelly’s new novel, The Reversal, I couldn’t help thinking of a friend of mine, who met our local author at a party this summer. Elin Hilderbrand writes breezy romances set on our summer tourist island – stories of beach cl… Read full post »

3/10

     My Dad is dead.

     There’s some stranger in his hospital bed pretending to be him and that means they murdered him, someone killed my Dad and I want to scream and cry I’m crying now while I’m writing this,/… Read full post »

For the next month, Tom visited the cemetery on Long Island every day. He commuted, leaving the city in the morning, returning in the afternoon, with rush hour traffic stalled on the other side of the road both ways. It seemed appropriate to him: he was in his… Read full post »

         The funeral was three days later. Tom was standing in a black suit, facing a full house in the Tobias Cahoon Funeral Home on East 65th Street. Outside, thousands of grief-stricken New Yorkers… Read full post »

The trip to Des Moines was a torment of delay. The Secret Service helicopter had engine trouble and they were forced to drive to the airport. There was a traffic jam that started at the Triboro Bridge, and while their siren pushed them through it at first, eventually… Read full post »

The Kindle e-reader from Amazon is a paradoxical little toy.

Much of what’s good about it is also bad, and vice versa. On the one hand, it strips all ancillary aesthetic pleasure from the act of reading: no interesting fonts, no creamy paper, no… Read full post »

On the last unspoiled day of Tom Jaglom’s life, he was awakened by a telephone call from the Secret Service.

“Sorry to wake you up but there’s been a change of plans.”

For a second or two Tom didn’t recognize the sandpapery voice.

“Who is… Read full post »

Christmas was informal at the Jaglom’s: Everyone wore their jammies, and the press was not invited. Unless there was a national emergency, the President took no phone calls. Vice President Crane tried to get through during breakfast, just as he had the year before, between… Read full post »

That spring, both Jim and Eddie were accepted at Harvard. Eddie chose to attend West Point instead. At first, Jim was astonished. But it made sense -- Eddie’s father was the black sheep of a military family, a convert to pacifism with a dishonorable discharge in his past.… Read full post »

Jim Gramble loved seeing his by-line in the newspaper. But more than that, he loved seeing his words set in type and printed, made public and official, turned into an es­sential part of the morning for two and a half million people.

He remembered the… Read full post »

The old boathouse creaked in the Atlantic gale. It leaned out over the bluff, gray shingles tilting toward the ocean under the milling gray sky. The barren winter landscape made Tom wonder what it must have been like living on Nantucket during the whaling days of the last… Read full post »