His romantic weekend in ruins, shy twenty-something artist Perry Foster learns that things can always get worse when he returns home from San Francisco to find a dead body in his bathtub. A dead body in a very ugly sportscoat -- and matching socks. The dead man is a stranger to Perry, but that's not much of a comfort; how did a strange dead man get in a locked flat at the isolated Alton Estate in the wilds of the "Northeast Kingdom" of Vermont? Perry turns to help from "tall, dark and hostile" former navy SEAL Nick Reno -- but is Reno all that he seems?
The book continues to be a bestseller six years after publication. It is currently being translated into French, Italian, Finnish and German. A sequel is planned for 2015.
There was a strange man in Perry’s bathtub. He was wearing a sports coat -- a rather ugly sports coat. And he was dead.
Perry, who had just spent the most painful and humiliating twenty-four hours of his life, and had driven over an hour from the airport in blinding rain to reach the relative peace and privacy of the chilly rooms he rented at the old Alston Estate, stood gaping.
His headache vanished. He forgot about being exhausted and starving and soaked to the skin. He forgot about wishing he was dead, because here was someone dead, and it wasn’t pretty.
His fingers still rested on the light switch. He turned the overhead lights off. In the darkness, he heard rain rattling against the window; he heard his breathing, which sounded fast and scared; and from the living room he heard the soft chime of the clock he had bought at the thrift store on Bethlehem Road. Nine slow, silvery chimes. Nine o’clock.
Perry switched the light back on.
The dead man was still in his bathtub.
“It’s not possible,” Perry whispered.
Apparently this didn’t convince the corpse, who continued to stare at him under half-closed eyelids.
The dead man was a stranger; Perry was pretty sure of that. It -- he -- was middle-aged and he needed a shave. His face was sort of greenish-red, the cheeks sunken in as though his features were slipping. His legs stuck out over the side of the tub like a mannequin’s. One shoe had a hole in the sole. His socks were yellow. Goldenrod, actually. They matched the ugly checked jacket.
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Finnish
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Unavailable for translation.
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French
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Unavailable for translation.
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German
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Unavailable for translation.
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Italian
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Unavailable for translation.
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