The wrong man - John Katzenbach

For three days, I’ve been attached to “The wrong man”, great suspense novel of the American author John Katzenbach.

Really, I couldn’t put the book down while I was reading it. And this is because Katzenbach knows exactly how to hook his readers to his books pages. Every chapter contains the exact amount of drug that you will need to take in the next one as soon as possible. Katzenbach is a master. On Youtube, I searched for some of his interviews regarding “The wrong man”, but I find none. Instead, I found interviews about his many other books. I realized that this Katzenbach had a large amount of fans here in Latin-American. And this is because those fans know what I have discovered: John knows how to provide the precise doses of this narcotic called suspense.  

As usual, I found that novel on one of my visits to my favorite second-hand bookshop in the Jirón Quilca: the Mister Luna’s second-hand bookshop. “The wrong man” cost me 3 soles. But with my discount of preferred customer, the price went down to 2.5 soles. I chose “the wrong man” because its first pages were so inviting. On Mister’s Luna second-hand bookshop I always buy 8 to 10 books with 10 or 15 soles. It’s paradise to me.

To this day, I’ve watched a whole bunch of Katzenbach’s interviews on Youtube. I would like to share this quote of his:

“People say that I write books that are psychological thrillers. All good books should be psychological thrillers. All good books should make you want to turn the page. Every book should be exciting.”

That’s right. No matter what technique is used to build a novel, but that technique and other craftwork used by the author should be capable of ignite the reader’s curiosity, so he could be easily drawn throughout the book pages till the last one.

So, let’s talk a little bit about “The wrong man”. You could not easily forget the psychopath Michael O’Connell. This is an awesome bad guy. He had a quick intercourse episode with Ashley, the only daughter of the ex-married couple formed by Scott Freeman, History college professor, and Sally Freeman-Richards, who decided to live with Hope Frazer, a soccer coach at a female school. Sally, a somewhat successful lawyer, had decided to live next to the person she felt happy with, despite what people’s prejudices could argue.

Michael desires Ashley so bad above anything else in the world that he would try anything to have her by his side even ruin the lives of her parents and relatives.

Suspense, violence, menaces and murders are carefully intertwined in “The wrong man”. But there’s also love. After you finish reading the book, you will agree with me that love is the main ingredient in the novel, love in all of its forms: The twisted and obsessive love that Michael O’Connell offers to his victim and the love of Ashley’s parents that will take them to undertake a brutal enterprise, an enterprise that will leave its signature on their lives forever.

Now, I will have to wait for my lady to buy for me one of the other Katzenbach’s books: “The madman’s tale”, “A day of reckoning”, “The analyst”, and others. Because the odds that another second-hand Katzenbach’s book reaching Mister Luna’s bookshop are rare. I count on you, babe.