Nerve Damage by Peter Abrahams
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

" ROY VALOIS, SCULPTOR, DIES AT 46
by Richard Gold and Myra Burns
Roy Valois, a sculptor whose large works are displayed in many public spaces around the United States and at several prominent museums, died yesterday at his home in Ethan Valley, Vermont. He was 46."

We first meet Roy Valois when he dreams about his wife, Delia, who died 15 years earlier. A PhD in economics, she used to work at Hobbes Institute, an economic think tank. Roy has just finished a new sculpture, called Delia, an artistic homage to his wife whom he loved so much. Roy is now with Jen and has been planning to propose to her. Yet having experienced alarming medical symptoms he consulted a specialist who offered a grim prognosis. Roy becomes morbidly interested in his obituary, which - like for all famous people - is written well ahead of time in New York Times. The obituary is flattering but it contains incorrect information about Delia's employment history. Roy sets out to correct the info but the data he uncovers makes him lose confidence as to Delia's work record. Where did she work? Who was she? Did he know his beloved wife at all?

Nerve Damage (2007) is a suspense novel slash thriller by Peter Abrahams. The setup is intriguing but having been burnt by the same author's Revolution #9 , with its fantastic setup and complete fiasco of the latter parts of the plot, I was quite apprehensive. Well, indeed, the plot does deteriorate a bit, and much earlier than in Revolution, but it remains marginally interesting; so I kept reading on to the very end, which is too sappy for my taste and relies on a cliché literary device. But the reader will probably enjoy tense scenes like:

"First, he cleared the top of the coffin. Then he dug a little side cut, a place to stand. [...He] stepped into the side cut, bent forward, got his hands under the lid of the coffin. Then, straightening his back, pulling with his arms, he slowly raised the lid and laid it aside."

Peter Abrahams' prose is very readable without being shallow so I can forgive him several implausible turns of the plot. Paper-thin characterizations of Skippy, Jen, and Mr. Truesdale are harder to forgive, though.

A marginally recommended read, far from the three-and-a-half-star quality of A Perfect Crime , yet serviceable when nothing's better around.

Two-and-a-half stars.

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