I don't think I understood the whole thing, but it's not all my fault. Deliberately author Michael Marshall splits up his story between the first person narration of ex-cop/coffee table book captionist Jack Whelan, with a variety of third person accounts that are purposely confusing and disparate, so that you need a second reading to be able to piece it all together properly. I kept skimming and skimming, thinking with my fingers crossed that "this will all make sense later, I'm sure," but eventually I got at least a glimmer of a storyline involving a young nine year old girl who at first seems like she's been kidnapped by an evil, foul smelling man, but within a few pages we find out that this "abduction" is not really what it seems and the the 9 year old, cute little Madison, exhibits the cold, maniacal soullessness of an adult, and an especially demented one at that. But why?  Why?  Why?  She's like Patty McCormack in THE BAD SEED, but why?  Author Marshall has a new theory about why some kids hit the ground running, while others just go to the devil. He grabs your lapels and shakes this theory into you until you reach a point where you just want to slap his hands away, he's so insistent. On the home front, Jack is married to a woman who, just like in all the best postwar noir stories, isn't what she seems. This part of the story would seem more original if it hadn't been done just last month in the techno thriller HOOKED. Searching for the truth about his wife, Jack turns more and more to an old high school friend, Gary Fisher, once an idolized athletic hero in school, later a top lawyer, but obviously a man with a burning mission. As Jack grows suspicious of Amy, he grows closer and closer to Gary (who in the conventional thriller would have been a woman I think), and their eventual friendship and bonding has a distinct homoerotic charge to it as they both learn that women (and little girls) can't be trusted. Marshall makes you read through to the end but you'll be scratching your head over many of his plot choices, and I can't make up my mind whether the story is actually crazy stupid, or maybe too smart for a moron like myself
On the home front, Jack is married to a woman who, just like in all the best postwar noir stories, isn't what she seems