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Summary
Summary
"Original and imaginative . . . Ripping suspense, sheer terror, and a wrenching love story." --Sandra Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Friction
The terrible truth about Manderley is that someone is always watching.
Manderley Resort is a gleaming, new twenty-story hotel on the California coast. It's about to open its doors, and the world--at least those with the means to afford it--will be welcomed into a palace of opulence and unparalleled security. But someone is determined that Manderley will never open. The staff has no idea that their every move is being watched, and over the next twelve hours they will be killed off, one by one.
Writing in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, and with a deep bow to Daphne du Maurier, author Gina Wohlsdorf pairs narrative ingenuity and razor-wire prose with quick twists, sharp turns, and gasp-inducing terror. Security is grand guignol storytelling at its very best.
A shocking thriller, a brilliant narrative puzzle, and a multifaceted love story unlike any other, Security marks the debut of a fearless and gifted writer.
"Be surprised, be very surprised: Gina Wohlsdorf brings more than just plot twists and a terrifically tender love story to this thriller . . . It's her playful homage to Hitchcock and du Maurier that had me reading, howling, and just plain loving this novel." --Sara Gruen, author of At the Water's Edge
" Grand Hotel meets Psycho in the age of surveillance . . . Security is cinematically vivid, crisply written, and sharp enough to cut . . . Wohlsdorf brilliantly subverts our expectations of the action genre in this smart, shocking, poignant thriller." --Emily Croy Barker, author of The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
"The thrill of this novel goes beyond its wickedly clever, split-screen, high-tech wizardry--a kind of video gamer's literary retake of Hitchcock's Rear Window--and emanates from its strange, disembodied narrator . . . The effect is terrifying, sexy, dizzying, and impossible to look away from." --Tim Johnston, author of Descent
"Shocking and filled with Tarantino-ish dark humor. . . Structurally reminiscent of the amazing Jennifer Egan,Wohlsdorf's book is certainly a hybrid, like nothing else. Get ready." --Ann Beattie, author of The State We're In
"Flawless . . . Security is perfectly tuned for blockbuster status . . . They don't make a hotel big enough to house all the people who will want to read this, and soon, as in Manderley, all eyes will be on Wohlsdorf." --Daniel Kraus, Booklist, starred review
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Wohlsdorf's stellar debut, property manager Tessa is sweating the small stuff at the new Manderley Resort, fretting over which place settings to deploy at the upcoming opening gala. She's unaware that certain uninvited guests are about to turn the opulent Santa Barbara, Calif., Shangri-La-which has been flogging its state-of-the-art security-into an abattoir. Meanwhile, Tessa's foster brother and former heartthrob, motocross legend Brian Domini, reappears after 11 years of estrangement. As the Ducati-swift plot accelerates from there, told through a mosaic of views from various Manderley security cameras (as seen by an initially unidentified narrator), it's a testament to Wohlsdorf's skill that she successfully negotiates the numerous tonal shifts between the unfolding Grand Guignol splatterfest and Tessa and Brian's rekindling passion. Readers will gradually discover an even more emotionally affecting story as the action races to the moving climax. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In 1973, MGM released a curious film called Wicked, Wicked. Shot entirely in what the movie posters touted as Duo-Vision (better known as split-screen), it followed, in simultaneous halves, a string of brutal murders at a swanky California hotel. Loud, jazzy, and splashed with blood, it was an American take on the giallo slasher films popularized by Italian directors like Dario Argento and Mario Bava. But unlike cult classics like Suspiria or Kill, Baby . . . Kill!, Wicked, Wicked quickly faded away. Still, one has to wonder if debut author Wohlsdorf, staying up too late as a child, managed to catch it, and it made an impact. If so, her trauma is our gain: Security, her debut, is a flawless literary refresh of giallo devices, completed with a masked-and-gloved killer; long, sharp knives; screaming; lingerie-clad victims; and twists aplenty oh, get ready for the twists. The setting is another California hotel: Manderley Resort. (Du Maurier is only the first genre nod: the killer wears the same mask seen in John Carpenter's Halloween, and critical action takes place in Room 1408, a number made notorious by Stephen King.) Tessa is a chief-of-staff of sorts, leading a skeleton crew through final preparations for Manderley's big opening as the choice getaway of the rich and famous out for both opulence and unparalleled privacy. The point-of-view is third-person omniscient, or so it seems for 11 pages, at which point Tessa looks into a security camera at us; at least that's what it feels like and speaks. It's the first shock of many: we do have a narrator, it turns out, and he's sitting at a bank of security cams that, unbeknownst to staff, probe into every single room of the hotel. Discovering who this affectless security officer is and why he doesn't do anything as the body count increases is one of the supreme pleasures of the book. Wohlsdorf draws out revelations with treacherous patience, altering our perception of events each time we think we know the score. Here comes the gimmick, but as in Wicked, Wicked, it's a good one. When concurrent action happens, Wohlsdorf splits the page into two, three, or four columns (some necessitating holding the book sideways), each one representing a camera. The stunt is never overused, instead providing a periodic strangling of tension before the next jump, and slash, and gush. Just like that, Wohlsdorf's peculiar prose choices make sense, from the stumpy declarative sentences (the security officer is only doing his job, reporting what he sees) to the jarring lack of line breaks between intercut locations (the officer is flicking his eyes back and forth, too quick for the book to bother with traditional spacing). These are, of course, stylistic choices, though the novel has, in a way, an anti-style it's a poker-faced account of some unpleasant goings-on. This would fall flat without strong characters and plotting, and Wohlsdorf brings both. Tessa is a self-made success, a cement wall laced with cracks that don't show until the 11-years-late return of her former foster-brother and, weirdly, longtime crush Brian, who might be ready to give up his dangerous life on the motocross circuit if they can both admit their illicit feelings. The rest of the cast? They are just colorful enough that we wince when the killer steps out of his blood-drenched secret elevator, universal key-card in hand, and slips into their rooms. It's spoiling nothing to say that most of these side characters, however delightful, are going to end up as meat piled in bathtubs. That is, after all, the game we're playing, and Wohlsdorf, though a rookie, knows how to play. Unlike the aforementioned obscure horror flick, Security is perfectly tuned for blockbuster status: scary, gory, kinky, and experimental enough to push readers' envelopes without going so far as to lose mainstream appeal. They don't make a hotel big enough to house all the people who will want to read this, and soon, as in Manderley, all eyes will be on Wohlsdorf.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
DAPHNE DU MAURIER'S 1938 novel "Rebecca" opens memorably: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." As it turns out, Manderley, Maxim de Winter's grand Cornish estate, is more nightmare than dream, the scene of psychological torment, lies and murder, its holiday appeal ranking somewhere between Ann Radcliffe's castle of Udolpho and Stephen King's Overlook Hotel. In Gina Wohlsdorf's debut novel, "Security," the self-made real estate developer Charles Destin Jr. names his new resort after de Winter's notorious pile. (It's suggested that Destin Sr.'s recorded readings of "Rebecca" were an influence.) With Manderley's "Party of the Year" weeks away, what could possibly go wrong? The story's heroine, Tessa, superintends the party's finishing touches. (Among other gimmicks, Destin has undertaken to pour champagne into an elaborate 1,000-glass pyramid, comparing the display to "the miracle of Jesus and his disciples feeding the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish.") Wohlsdorf conjures Tessa from action-movie central casting: "Tessa never cries"; "Tessa is a difficult woman to love. She likes sex, but she also likes boxing"; "Tessa's a difficult person to get to know"; "Tessa is an ambulant contradiction. She is at once strikingly strong and heartrendingly vulnerable." Piecemeal, we're provided with details of her clouded past. A wildly gesticulating French chef ("The dishwasher. She is broken!' He shakes a fist in the air"), as well as various cleaners and caterers, fill out the staff. A Rhodes scholar-cum-former member of the Navy SEALs oversees security. (Readers expecting something along the lines of Steven Seagal's knife-wielding ex-SEAL/cook from "Under Siege" will be disappointed.) WE ARE SOON told by the mysteriously omniscient narrator that two capital-K killers are on the loose, each wearing the mask from the "Halloween" movies. (Lest there be any confusion: "It's the same mask from the ?Halloween' movies, the ones with Jamie Lee Curtis.") One of the marauders, called "the Thinker" (he "often rests his masked head on his fist. When he does this, he resembles Rodin's famous sculpture The Thinker'"), keeps watch as his taller, brawnier accomplice, "the Killer," proceeds from room to room, murdering coolly and meticulously: "The Killer ... draws the blade across his throat slowly enough to relish the act, but quickly enough that he can ... speedwalk to the kitchen, discard the knife in the sink, wash up ... and situate himself in the dining chair, napkin in lap, steam still rising from the cuisine, the first forkful of which - he chooses a bite of cordon bleu and half a broccoli floret." In other words, Patrick Bateman meets Michael Myers. Though the killers' motives are unclear, their violent spree is rendered vividly through the hotel's pervasive network of cameras. To simulate the effect, Wohlsdorf narrates various scenes in split screen, with the page divided into columns following each camera's vantage. While I appreciate the novelty, the layout feels more school textbook than thriller. The scheme is not helped by the narrator's musings on security and safety: "The best security is invisible security" (repeated twice more, later, for emphasis); "The most thorough safety is safety one's object of protection doesn't know about"; "Security means never having to say you're sorry." (O.K., I made up the last one.) Wohlsdorf is fond of paradoxes: "Tessa looks bottomlessly sad, because she looks almost happy"; "If nothing matters, then everything does"; "It was senseless. It made perfect sense." And then there are her at-times puzzling analogies: "He keeps talking, like his words are rocks and speech is their momentum down a hillside"; "It's as if they see El Dorado in the banality of the other"; "Tessa and Brian are like scared gods in a bleached sea." The plot moves along - bodies pile up, Tessa reckons with her past and comes face to mask with the killers - but the victims generally lack flesh. For all the blood, "Security" is strangely bloodless. MAXWELL CARTER writes frequently on popular culture for the Book Review and other publications.
Kirkus Review
A camera's-eye view shows more than we may be prepared to see in this innovative thriller. Debut novelist Wohlsdorf uses a clever low-tech techniquesplitting pages into two or three columns of textto show simultaneous action as it's recorded by cameras in different sections of the Manderley Resort. The new hotel promises to raise the bar where security is concerned, but staff members are being murdered at an alarming rate and threatening to ruin the grand opening (and the marble floors) with their trailing organs. Manager Tessa is oblivious to this, her sole concern being that things run smoothly, until a body practically lands on her. It's uncertain at first whether the killings are being carried out to send her a message and who (or what) is narrating the story; that's the book's big reveal, and it's worth the wait. If the bodies stacking up like cordwood distract a bit from personal revelations about Tessa and a figure from her past, no matterthe real thrills here are the clues as to what's going on, which are doled out with precision, as well as the dark humor in some of the killers' methods. Almost nobody in this story runs the risk of dreaming again of Manderley; the vast majority take the big sleep before the curtain falls, in increasingly gory ways that nevertheless play out with farcical timing. The resolution stretches credibility, but by then the adrenaline is pumping so hard it hardly matters. A fight to the death next to a tower of champagne flutes is a central scene here, and it perfectly shows how intensity and frivolity continually skirt one another under the eyes of watching cameras. This horror story with a humorous edge casts video surveillance as both hero and villain and raises plentiful goose bumps as a result. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Tessa, manager of the ultraluxurious, ultrasecure Manderley Hotel, has a massive checklist to finish in preparation for the grand opening. Unbeknownst to her, a small crew of killers entering the hotel is picking off the staff-and the murders are being observed by a mysterious unnamed narrator through the hotel's extensive security system. VERDICT With an innovative presentation and numerous references to pop culture staples, this action-packed thriller should appeal to fans of the Die Hard film series. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The maze is twenty-five hundred yards square. Destin Management Group planted hedges before they even began construction on the hotel, since plants can't be paid to hurry like contractors can. The hedges are twelve feet tall, lush, rounded smooth as sanded wood, and currently a dark black green. This is because the hotel is straight and monolithic, a stark white block on a flat stretch of Santa Barbara beach, the kind of building that inspires arguments about whether its simplistic appearance is a great leap forward in design, or whether a child with a crayon and a napkin could have drawn it while waiting for a five-dollar grilled cheese. It's visible from the Pacific Coast Highway but only just. The driveway is quite long so as to accommodate the hedge maze, which is the size of half a football field, and it is darkening, now, in the hotel's shadow. In the maze's center, the dark red roses are immaculate, thanks to four hours of grooming and possibly because Sid, a freckled and obese landscape technician, is singing "O Danny Boy" in his surprisingly gentle tenor. He told the landscape architect that romantic serenades are the secret to growing flawless red roses; fragile flowers need to know they're loved. He also told the landscape architect he hated the hotel and would take the contract on the condition he never had to go inside. "It looks like a goddamn tooth. Like a tooth somebody yanked out and stuck on the beach." He pointed at the hotel and spat in its direction, unaware anyone was listening. "Like it'd bite you when you weren't watching close." Manderley Resort does look somewhat like a tooth. Kinder metaphors like "jewel" and "main sail" are more prominent in the marketing materials. Ads in every medium have ensured that Manderley is the talk of its demographic. Every third billboard in Los Angeles splashes a quote from Travel magazine about how tasteful, how opulent, and how special Manderley will be once it opens in August. It is now mid-July. More tasteful and more opulent invitations arrived at the households of LA's elite yesterday. It's going to be the Party of the Year. It says so on the invitation. Charles Destin--owner of Destin Management Group, owner of Manderley Resort--does not know how to throw a party that is anything but the Party of the Year. In the maze, Sid's wrist beeps, signaling the end of his workday. He croons his final verse to the dry, rose-heavy air--"For you will bend "--snipping deep into a hedge so that a perfect bloom's absence isn't blight on the foliage. He slides his large clippers through a fat loop in his tool belt and takes a smaller pair from a thin loop, trimming the thorns from the rose's twelve-inch stem. Sid goes to the fountain at the center of the maze. Immense, made of stone, themed on fruit and hummingbirds, it sits dank and murky, its wide rim holding the detritus of Sid's labor: excised leaf clots and thorny branches overflowing a black bucket, and plastic sandwich bags bunched in a rusted silver lunch pail. Sid tweezes the rose between thumb and forefinger, setting it on the fountain's rim with exaggerated care. Using a schmaltzy pianissimo for the final strains of his ballad, he picks up the bucket, shuts his lunch pail and locks it, and departs from the maze's center, taking the first right turn in his favored route, which is effective but not remotely efficient. On the nineteenth floor, Tessa is boarding the elevator. Its soft ding carries to the ballroom's ceiling, thirty feet above her, and bounces off the mural there: a sunset sky in muted pinks and oranges, playing host to a dozen subtle, and subtly modern, cherubim. Their fleshy faces all stare down instead of up. The ballroom's enormous west-facing windows trap the earliest phases of an actual sunset. Bars of light and shadow crosshatch tables set with china finer than bone. White napkins are folded in the shapes of swans, magnolias, seashells. Only a few are folded in the shape of napkins. A clutch of red roses serves as each table's centerpiece, and if a guest asks, staff is to confirm that the roses are from Manderley's garden, though they're not. Tessa placed a standing order with a florist last week to deliver fifty dozen every Monday. She holds the elevator's glass doors open with her left boot and takes a final look at the southeast corner of the ballroom, where Jules is holding the base of a twenty-foot ladder. Jules's husband and catering partner, Justin, is finishing the pyramid of a thousand champagne flutes they began at seven this morning. At the Party of the Year, Charles Destin intends to climb this ladder and pour a bottle of champagne, the fizz of which will overflow the glass at the apex, to the four glasses under it, and so on, into a thousand glasses. A thin plastic hose worms up through the pyramid. The hose runs to a storage room, where four large tanks of champagne will finish the work that Destin's pouring will start. Destin compared the illusion of the single bottle of Cristal filling a thousand glasses to the miracle of Jesus and his disciples feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. When Destin made this comparison, Tessa rolled her eyes so hard, one of her contact lenses fell out. In the elevator, she presses the button for the eleventh floor. The glass doors slide shut, the nineteenth floor rises in front of her, and Tessa's posture slackens, an exhale showing in her shoulders. She's pretty, but not an obvious pretty. She tried modeling in college ("Because I'm a twig," she said once), and the photographers told her she only looked right in three-quarter profile, due to a face that's a little long, a chin that's weak, and cheekbones that don't protuberate. Tessa's the kind of person who latches onto criticism thankfully and treats compliments like insults. It's infuriating. She makes a check mark on her clipboard as the eighteenth floor passes, and another as the seventeenth floor appears underneath her. The elevator is excruciatingly slow. This is because it is diamond shaped and made of glass. Every day at five o'clock, Tessa descends from the ballroom to the foyer, scrutinizing each floor for problems, and the process takes an hour. She usually walks the halls, but she doesn't have time for that today. Her view from the elevator consists of the long hallway that links the north and south wings of guest rooms--the middle stem of a letter I --and this doubtlessly grates on her, to check off the premises as passing inspection without inspecting them thoroughly. The front sheet of her clipboard shows a diagram of Manderley's layout with floors numbered one through twenty. The twentieth floor is shaded. Tessa makes a check mark on her diagram for the sixteenth floor. She taps her boot impatiently. Before the fifteenth floor appears, she makes a check mark in its space. She pinches the bridge of her nose, her eyes falling shut and staying that way, which means when the fifteenth floor does appear, and Vivica in the bright white hallway spies Tessa in the elevator and waves, Tessa doesn't see her. Vivica is carrying a purple bottle of carpet cleaner and a white cloth, which she flaps ineffectually until Tessa sinks out of sight. Vivica's mouth draws down in disappointment. She walks toward the north end of the hall, turns left, and sinks to her knees in the entryway of Room 1516. She sprays the carpet cleaner on a round, red stain the size of a quarter and curses it in a flurry of Spanish. She thinks an electrician cut himself. This is not what happened. The Killer is on the seventh floor. He's washing his hands in Room 717, scrubbing vivid red from his nail beds and knuckles into the bathroom sink. He picks a fine, light hair from his shirt cuff, studies it with brief interest, and flicks it behind him. It lands on the white bath mat. The water in the sink is paling from a strange, swirled red orange to a shade that matches the gold leaf of the taps. A knife the length of an average man's forearm is drying on a white towel beside the basket of assorted guest soaps. Tessa opens her eyes at the fourteenth floor, nods, and makes a firm check mark. She waits, and makes another for the twelfth floor. There is no thirteenth floor; Charles Destin is extremely superstitious. Excerpted from Security: A Novel by Gina Wohlsdorf All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.