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Summary
Summary
The author and heroine of The Red Scream return in a novel so terrifying, so filled with squirming suspense, it's bound for the bestseller lists. When Kirkus Reviews greeted Mary Willis Walker's last book, The Red Scream, with "welcome to the big time," they weren't kidding. That novel established Walker as an author with "the kind of clout that sets publishers' mouths watering" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). And now she has done it again, with an unforgettable tale ripped from the headlines and more terrifying than our worst nightmares. Kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school bus driver and eleven of his young charges have been held underground at the group's highly fortified compound for forty-six days. While a team of federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets outto discover everything she can about the cult's iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai. And as the clock ticks inexorably, she takes the role of Clarisse Starling opposite Mordecai's Hannibal Lecter, engaging in a psychological confrontation as harrowing as any in The Silence Of The Lambs. Tough, terrifying, and relentlessly heart-wrenching, this is a novel whose images no reader will ever forget.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
YATrapped underground for a ritualistic 50 days of cleansing are a busload of 11 elementary-school students and their Vietnam-vet bus driver. Kidnapped by Samuel Mordecai, a religious fanatic, the group slowly realizes that without a rescue attempt by the FBI, their demise will mark the beginning of Mordecai's prophesied apocalypse. Because he once found amateur detective Molly Cone to be a fair journalist, he requests that she interview him again. A chilling portrait of the man and his followers is tempered by the honest, earnest work of the FBI as they attempt negotiation and finally rescue. Molly's tenacity in her investigation of Mordecai leaves not one wart uncovered, yet without the help of the bus driver's literary friends, no one would be able to decipher the clues the entombed captives have hidden in their allocated one-minute messages to family members. A book that is horrifying in its realistic portrayal of religious fanaticism, heartrending in its description of the children's ordeal, and thrilling when it records one man's bravery.Pam Spencer, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Again featuring journalist Molly Cates, Walker's latest suspense tale concerns a religious fanatic who abducts a busload of schoolchildren. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A sect of religious fanatics imprisons a dozen school-aged hostages in their Texas compoundand Walker gets a chance to show how a tough-minded writer might have turned Waco around. Fade in on Day 46 of the hostage crisis. The 11 kids and bus driver Walter Demming, hidden in an underground bus for over six weeks, are near the breaking point when her editor persuades Lone Star Monthly reporter Molly Cates that her interview two years ago with Samuel Mordecai, self-anointed messiah of the Hearth Nazarenes, gives her the edge on the story of a lifetime. (The editor's obviously forgotten what a bang-up job Molly did in her Edgar-winning The Red Scream last year.) As she runs around interviewing likely contacts with Mordecai, Molly becomes obsessed with locating his birth mother, who abandoned him as an infant; if only she can reunite mother and son, she thinks, she just might provoke a breakthrough in the fruitless hostage negotiations. Molly doesn't know that the FBI isn't getting anywhere with Mordecai because there's no chance of his releasing the children: He plans a millennial sacrifice of innocents on the 50th day of their captivity. Led by burned-out Demming, who tries to rally them by telling an animal fable based on his hitch in Vietnam, the kids listen passively to Mordecai's daily preaching, practice their defensive maneuvers for the day they're sure is coming, and pray that the Hearth Nazarenes will get an all- important inhaler for an asthmatic hostage. Meanwhile, Molly, thrown back together with her hostage negotiator ex-husband and his killer dog, finally tracks down Mordecai's motherbut she's frantically angry and defensive, exactly the last person the authorities want to meet with Mordecai. What now? Nail-biting suspense from the first page, masterfully extended to the last. Check your political sympathies at the door, stock up on your blood-pressure medication, and enjoy. (First printing of 200,000; author tour)
Booklist Review
Walker's Red Scream not only garnered raves from critics and readers, it also won the 1994 Edgar Award. Just a year after this hard-to-top performance, Walker has produced another dynamite thriller. Intrepid, wisecracking crime reporter Molly Cates is back, this time confronting wacko cult leader Samuel Mordecai, whose Austin, Texas, compound is just as bound-for-tragedy as David Koresh's. Mordecai believes the end of the world is imminent, and according to a divine vision he's received, he must sacrifice a group of purified "lambs of God" who'll serve as his ticket into Heaven. To that end, he's kidnapped a school bus driver and 11 children and kept them hostage in a buried bus for 46 days. The hostage negotiators can't make headway, and they're terrified of another disaster of Waco proportions. Enter Molly, who interviewed Mordecai months earlier and is the only person he will trust. The story moves from the gut-wrenching tension inside the hostage bus to the frustrated negotiators to Molly, who's racing against time to psych Mordecai out and rescue the children before their captor begins his final sacrifice. Walker is a master at building suspense to a well-nigh unbearable level, and her spellbinding plot, outstanding writing, and one-of-a-kind characters will keep readers mesmerized until the shocking climax. A must-have! (Reviewed August 1995)0385468598Emily Melton
Library Journal Review
Journalist Molly Cates races against the clock to save a school bus full of children from an extremist cult. What makes Walker's (The Red Scream) story special is the perspective of the bus driver, Walter Demming, as he struggles to keep the children under his care safe from their kidnappers. VERDICT Those with a particular fear of being buried alive might want to avoid this heart-pounding thriller, but the stout of heart will enjoy the ride. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.