Sleeping Beauty CD

Rating:
Summary: Shocking and suspensful...A definite MUST read!
Review: Ashley Spencer is your typical teenager. She has great parents, makes good grades in school and she is a star on the soccer team, but her perfect life is about to be shattered by a shocking act of violence.

While her reporter mom is on assignment, Ashley spends quality time with her father and her best friend until a stranger enters the Spencer home and changes things forever. The man stabs Ashley's father and then moves on to her friend, raping and killing her while Ashley sits tied up. As Ashley sits waiting for the killer to return her father crawls in to help her, setting her free to escape. Barely getting away alive, Ashley makes it to a neighbor's house where she calls the police. The police begin investigating the crime scene to discover a key piece of evidence left behind by the killer.

Ashley's mom returns to home to deal with the tragedy and to try to make a new start for her and her daughter. Terri Spencer finds The Oregon Academy a private school with a top notch girls soccer team. Once at the school, Ashley settles in quickly and soon has a good relationship with the Dean, Casey Van Meter.

As Terri settles into her new life she discovers a crucial piece of information that may lead to the capture of her husband's killer, a discovery that she shares with Casey Van Meter, but before anything can be done with the information she is killed and Casey is beaten into a coma, both victims to the same man who killed Ashley's father...a man who just happens to be a teacher at the school.

Things begin to spin out of control and the key to finding the identity of the killer, or killers lies in a true crime book called 'Sleeping Beauty' a book written by Casey's brother Miles.

'Sleeping Beauty' is a twist filled shocker that's as smart as it is suspenseful. The complex plot will keep you guessing right up until the end and even then you won't have it figured out. From the gripping opening scene until the surprise ending you will be held captive by a spellbinding thriller filled with gruesome murders and sharp courtroom scenes. Phillip Margolin is a master story teller and his imaginative new novel proves he is at the top of his game. Fans of Margolin's previous novels will find this to be his best book in years.

A definite MUST read!

Nick Gonnella

Rating:
Summary: WHAT A GREAT READ!
Review: I have read everyone of Phillip Margolin's books and each time, they are books I can't put down. Once again, with Sleeping Beauty, I was hooked from page one and read the book in a day! It kept me at the edge of my seat with suspence and with each turning page, I did not know what to expect. Can't wait for the next book! Keep em coming.

Rating:
Summary: A Tightly Written Tale with Surprising Twists and Turns
Review: Phillip Margolin has been boldly shouldering his way into the membership of 'A' List suspense authors since the publication of his classic novel GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Arriving, of course, is only part of the job. The rest is running as hard as you can to stay there. Margolin takes another step toward firmly ensconcing himself on that "must read" list with his latest novel, SLEEPING BEAUTY.

SLEEPING BEAUTY begins with a brutal home invasion that brings unspeakable tragedy into the life of Ashley Spencer, a teenager whose idyllic life is shattered when, while her mother is away on business, her father and her best friend are murdered by a fiend who leaves no clues as to his identity. When her mother is subsequently murdered, in an attack that also leaves Casey Van Meter, the headmistress of Ashley's school, in a coma, everything points to Joshua Maxfield, a charismatic teacher and bestselling author, as the killer. Maxfield is taken into custody, but when he escapes, Ashley suddenly finds herself in terrible danger.

She goes on the run for years, only to return when a stunning secret is revealed that brings Maxfield out of hiding and back into the arms of the police. Casey, meanwhile, awakens from her coma and is able at trial to identify Maxfield as her attacker and the killer of Ashley's mother. After a riveting trial Maxfield is convicted of murder.

Miles Van Meter, brother of Casey, writes SLEEPING BEAUTY, a true crime book about the events as a tribute to Casey and her ordeal. That, however, is not the end of Margolin's tale. It is, in fact, only the beginning! Margolin takes several structural chances in SLEEPING BEAUTY, and his success in doing so without so much as one misstep demonstrates the quality of his workmanship. This is a complex tale, yet Margolin explains things so well that the narrative never falters. It is worth noting that Margolin's style is such that he is able to lead the reader through a complicated plot shifting between the book's present and past without slowing the pace of his novel one bit, making it possible to devour the tale in one sitting.

Margolin, with SLEEPING BEAUTY, continues to challenge himself and others in his field with a tightly written tale that twists and turns through the narrative to a surprising but satisfying conclusion. This is yet another Margolin novel that is not to be missed.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: You Will Lose Sleep Reading This Beauty
Review: Phillip Margolin has never disappointed me yet with his novels, and with Sleeping Beauty, his streak continues. In this novel things are seldom what they seem and it would spoil the read for me to reveal the twists and turns that this story takes. The straight forward story is that Ashley Spencer, a high school soccer star has a friend to her house for a sleep over following a big game and awakens to the most terrifying experience one can imagine. A masked stranger is in their room. He ties up Ashley and takes her friend into another room where he rapes and murders her. Returning to her room, he says, "I'll see you later" and she hears him go down to the kitchen. Her father, who is the only parent in the house that night crawls into her room suffering from multiple stab wounds and using the last of his energy frees fer from her bonds and she escapes out her window.

This appears to be a random event until Ashley's mother is taking a creative writing course at a nearby private school in which Ashley has enrolled and hears the instructor read a passage from a piece of writing that describes the event that her daughter has gone through and also includes a part of what happened that received no publicity. She eventually determines that no one in the class wrote the story and that it was drafted by the instructor, Joshua Maxwell, himself.

Her suspicions are aroused to the point where she confides them to the Dean of the school who checks out the instructor's background and calls the mother suggesting a meeting to discuss what she has found. While jogging on the school grounds near where the meeting is taking place, Ashley hears a scream and decides to investigate. What she sees as she peers in the window are the bodies of two women lying on the floor (the Dean and Ashley's mother) and Joshua Maxwell standing over them with a bloody knife in his hands. He sees her as she turns and runs for her life with Maxwell in pursuit. She escapes, the story is out, Maxwell is pursued and eventually arrested and brought to trial. And the story is JUST BEGINNING. Margolin uses an interesting vehicle in telling the story. The Dean, Casey Van Meter, was not murdered, but ended up in a coma. Her brother, Miles Van Meter has written a book about the events leading up to her being in the coma entitled, Sleeping Beauty. A continuing thread in this book is his presence at a book signing where he reads from the book and answers questions about it.

I will leave it to the reader to explore the intracies of this very well told tale. It is an undertaking that will be well worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Great Suspense
Review: Sleeping Beauty is the best of Phillip Margolin. The answer to the crime that everyone thinks is solved actually lies in a book that one of the main characters has written. The ending is a surprise and getting there is half the fun in reading the book. It's a great read.

Ashley Spencer is 17 when an intruder kills her best friend and her father as he plans to come back from a snack in her kitchen to kill her. As the story unfolds, a suspect is apprehended, excapes, and someone tries to kill Ashley again. Her mother and the dean of her private school are killed in following chapters.

Througout the book when the killer seems to be known to all, something is not quite right. It's a good read when you think you know the answers, suspect you do not, and finally find out that you were totally off base.

Rating:
Summary: Tenth thriller's plot almost too twisty to believe
Review: We have read and generally enjoyed all nine of Margolin's previous outings, and find that this lawyer turned writer can craft a suspenseful story line along with the best of them. The books that have left us a little cold were ones where the author overpopulates with so many events and characters, doing justice to few of them, that hardly a reader can keep it all straight. Fortunately, in "Beauty", we have a cast of just a few main players to consider:

Ashley Spencer, a teenager who witnesses the brutal murder of her girlfriend and her father, and just narrowly escapes herself;

Joshua Maxfield, the alleged murderer who for much of the book is either a fugitive from the crime or in prison for it;

Miles Van Meter, best-selling author of a true-life account of the Spencer murders and the impact on his comatose sister;

Casey Van Meter, yet another victim who after Terri Spencer (Ashley's mother, who was away during the first attack) is killed in her sight, is struck on the head and spends years in a coma (ergo, the sleeping beauty!);

Randy Coleman, Casey's soon to be ex-husband from a mistaken quickie marriage;

and Jerry Philips, Ashley's attorney, who for a while takes almost too much personal interest in this whole matter.

Which one of these is really the killer? We're lead down many a path before all becomes clearer toward the end. Even with the big twist that gets to be a little foreseeable, a further twist right at the very end is good for a pretty shocking climax. Interesting courtroom drama helps break up the more violent action of much of the novel.

Most will find Margolin's latest a pleasing puzzler. We were not totally enamored by the telling of the story through flashbacks alternating with current time scenes where Miles is entertaining a crowd at a book signing. But the plot proceeds at a good pace, the characters are portrayed well enough, and the ending will catch many off guard. Guess that's what a thriller is all about!

Rating:
Summary: I Don't Think So !!!!!!!!
Review: WELL, I must say that this book is on my list of books I say were painful to read, heck PAINFUL to finish. The writing did seem adolescent and didn't have solid findings as it went on . There were too many discrepancis and so it seemed, not logical research had been used.
I am an avid reader and I am firm on not going to the back of the book nor do I stop it the middle, because the book, well,... sucks. This was the second book that I had to cheat on, due to it's unrealistic and very predictable plot. It was the first book by P.M. that I have read, I am a bit disappointed. Would I rate this higher the 1, I don't think so!