DIALOGUES
Dialogues
In this electrifying debut, Stephen Spignesi reinvents the psychological thriller with a chilling tale of mounting intensity. Ingeniously crafted and crackling with suspense, here is a puzzle within a puzzle, at the center of which stands a hauntingly enigmatic young woman whose story will challenge everything you think you know....
Six people have been murdered in the animal shelter in which they worked. One unlikely woman stands accused of the crimes. Her name is Victoria Troy, and she is the most improbable of cold-blooded killers. A lover of animals, petite, brainy, and gifted with a sharp sense of humor, she too worked in the shelter, in an anguishingly difficult job. What could possibly have provoked her to murder six of her own coworkers--some of whom were her friends.
Who is Tory Troy? It is up to Dr. Baraku Bexley to find out. An astute psychiatrist hired by the court to determine whether Tory is mentally competent to stand trial, Bexley must explore her complicated background and her unusual convictions as he interviews her in the Connecticut psychiatric hospital in which she is confined--and also talks to others who have known her.
What Bexley learns about this gifted young woman comes almost solely from these interviews...but is that enough to explain the divide between the person Tory seems to be and the terrible crimes she's accused of committing? Others find her difficult to fathom too: her lawyer, her nurse at the hospital, her mother, one of her former teachers; but all seek the same objective, to learn the truth no matter where it leads--or what secrets it may reveal about Tory, about the nature of evil, about us all.
Fiercely engaging and morally provocative, Dialogues is a rush of adrenaline that will keep you riveted from the first page to the last.
With the daring immediacy that a novel-in-conversations can deliver, Dialogues will confound, conflict, and possibly convert readers to the heroine's hauntingly disturbing point of view. Here is one of the freshest first novels of the year. In a mental hospital in Connecticut sits Tory Troy, a young woman facing six particularly grotesque charges of felony murder. Tory--bright, blunt, and empathetic--has spent the past year as a certified animal euthanasia technician; it was in the Waterbridge Animal Shelter that the police arrested her. As readers, we come to know her through the dialogues conducted with the doctor the court has appointed to assess her competence to stand trial--and through further conversations with the nursing staff, her mother, her one-time English professor, her lawyer, and others. Her singular perspective on the world--intricate, contrarian, deeply felt--makes Tory a fascinating but enigmatic guide to the darker regions of the human soul. In a novel that is distinctive not only for its subject matter but also for its unorthodox and riveting structure, author Stephen Spignesi leads us into Tory's world and leaves us there to find our way out. Each dialogue reveals something new or confounds our assumptions about her. Each time we believe we understand what has happened, difficult questions and insights arise. Gathering pace as the case reaches the courtroom--and then far beyond it--Dialogues will leave us both breathless and deeply moved.
Six people have been murdered in the animal shelter in which they worked. One unlikely woman stands accused of the crimes. Her name is Victoria Troy, and she is the most improbable of cold-blooded killers. A lover of animals, petite, brainy, and gifted with a sharp sense of humor, she too worked in the shelter, in an anguishingly difficult job. What could possibly have provoked her to murder six of her own coworkers--some of whom were her friends.
Who is Tory Troy? It is up to Dr. Baraku Bexley to find out. An astute psychiatrist hired by the court to determine whether Tory is mentally competent to stand trial, Bexley must explore her complicated background and her unusual convictions as he interviews her in the Connecticut psychiatric hospital in which she is confined--and also talks to others who have known her.
What Bexley learns about this gifted young woman comes almost solely from these interviews...but is that enough to explain the divide between the person Tory seems to be and the terrible crimes she's accused of committing? Others find her difficult to fathom too: her lawyer, her nurse at the hospital, her mother, one of her former teachers; but all seek the same objective, to learn the truth no matter where it leads--or what secrets it may reveal about Tory, about the nature of evil, about us all.
Fiercely engaging and morally provocative, Dialogues is a rush of adrenaline that will keep you riveted from the first page to the last.
With the daring immediacy that a novel-in-conversations can deliver, Dialogues will confound, conflict, and possibly convert readers to the heroine's hauntingly disturbing point of view. Here is one of the freshest first novels of the year. In a mental hospital in Connecticut sits Tory Troy, a young woman facing six particularly grotesque charges of felony murder. Tory--bright, blunt, and empathetic--has spent the past year as a certified animal euthanasia technician; it was in the Waterbridge Animal Shelter that the police arrested her. As readers, we come to know her through the dialogues conducted with the doctor the court has appointed to assess her competence to stand trial--and through further conversations with the nursing staff, her mother, her one-time English professor, her lawyer, and others. Her singular perspective on the world--intricate, contrarian, deeply felt--makes Tory a fascinating but enigmatic guide to the darker regions of the human soul. In a novel that is distinctive not only for its subject matter but also for its unorthodox and riveting structure, author Stephen Spignesi leads us into Tory's world and leaves us there to find our way out. Each dialogue reveals something new or confounds our assumptions about her. Each time we believe we understand what has happened, difficult questions and insights arise. Gathering pace as the case reaches the courtroom--and then far beyond it--Dialogues will leave us both breathless and deeply moved.