Subject: Review: "Red, Red, Robin' by Stephen Gallagher

From: [email-masked] (Rick Kleffel)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 20:28:30 GMT

Red, Red Robin
		Stephen Gallagher

The difference between a great thriller and a great novel is difficult to
define.  Stephen Gallagher's 'Red, Red Robin' is certainly the former and
often, but not always the latter.  Operating in the territory between Thomas
Harris and Ruth Rendell, Gallagher offers carefully crafted characters who
live through a hellish experience that is all too believable.  Unlike
Harris, he avoids the forensic focus and follows Rendell's example of
complex characters brought to life by superior prose.  Unlike Rendell, he
explores the explicitly horrific side of his characters' inclinations,
taking the reader on a hellish journey through physical terror.  'Red, Red
Robin' is a novel that operates on both sides of the equation, exploring
psychological degradation and bodily fear with equal dexterity.
	Wisely, Gallagher starts his novel focusing on the psychological
side, which keeps it a few cuts above the apparent movie-of-the-week
simplicity of the plot.  Ruth Lasseter, who is having an affair with a
married co-worker, needs an escort for the office party.  But Tim Hagan, the
man she picks abducts and tries to kill her afterwards.  Though she manages
to escape his physical presence, she cannot escape the psychological scars
the entire set of circumstances creates, nor their cause in her own past.
	Instead, she pursues the man herself, refusing to believe him dead
when the evidence suggests this, pushing herself farther into debt, poverty
and degradation to track him down.  Gallagher handles Ruth's downfall with
amazing ease, evoking the terror in domestic and workplace situations going
bad as Ruth's obsessions begin to rule her life and swallow her own good
sense.
	But he goes further than the mind alone.  Gallagher follows his own
creation, Tim Hagan, into Hagan's own past, a childhood that has created a
monster.  As Gallagher peels away the layers of Hagan's past and Ruth's
present, the two core characters come closer and closer to meeting, damaging
and killing those who make the mistake of trying to befriend them.
	Occasionally, Gallagher's evocations of physical terror seem to
disrupt the smooth flow of character development in 'Red, Red Robin', and
distract from the Masterpiece Theater' quality he creates in the other
sections.  But, on the other hand, they do serve quite well as horrifying
visions, and certainly aren't out of place, merely unexpected.  And
Gallagher has enough plot twists around to reward even the most demanding
fan of Rendell's Barbara Vine fiction.

%T Red, Red Robin
%A Stephen Gallagher
%I Ballantine Books
%G ISBN 0-345-38644-2
%O $18.00; US hard cover
%P 378 pages