Dead Time

Psychologist Alan Gregory has been contacted by his ex-wife, Meredith. She asked that Alan discreetly contact his police friend, Sam, to help find a young woman, Lisa, who is a surrogate for Meredith and her fiancee, Eric. The pregnant Lisa has disappeared without a trace and Lisa shares a past with Eric. Years ago on a hiking trip into the Grand Canyon a fellow backpacker went missing and was never seen again. Although questioned by the police at the time the hikers were unable to shed any light on the mystery. Now, years later, the secret of the Grand Canyon trip has come back to haunt those involved and the repercussions will threaten the unborn child and Alan himself.

I am a fan of Stephen White's Alan Gregory series from way back. show more This one was just a bit too convoluted and over-long for me. The mystery was an odd one and the reveal was not particularly satisfying. show less

What I enjoy about White's Alan Gregory thrillers is that I get as interested in the personal problems of the main characters as I do about the threat that is keeping them on the run. In this installment the personal problems include a shaky patch in Alan's marriage, his wife deciding to go to Europe to find the daughter she gave up for adoption, and the transition of Alan adopting the son of his neighbor and dear friend who was recently killed in a bombing while abroad--an adoption that her family is not so sure about. Meanwhile Alan's ex-wife Meredith suddenly re-appears in his life, with a request that he help her find the surrogate mother who is carrying her child for her--and has suddenly gone missing. Somehow Alan manages to show more handle all that is thrown at him and survive to star in another adventure. Fans of fast paced thrillers with complex plots and interpersonal drama as well as physical threats should lap this one up like warm milk. show less

Normally I don’t dive into a long-running series so far in, but this book was on a sale table and since it was a whopping 99-cents, I decided to give it a go. I should have known from the description that it would be a lot of fluff and very little substance. We’re led to believe all through the novel that someone in the group of 6 friends is at the heart of the mystery. Eric, Merideth’s fiance, is a strong suspect, but I knew he wouldn’t be the guilty party, if only because it was too obvious a set-up. No, it would be one of the other five. Wrong again. A complete outsider is really the culprit and so the emotional impact was pretty negligible. We don’t really get to know the dead girl and so her death isn’t so terrible. We show more do get to know some of the hiking party and that there would be a viper in their midst would have had a deeper emotional hook.

But it seems Stephen White likes to put his emotional hooks elsewhere. Mostly in Alan’s relationships with everyone else. The most fraught coupling is, creepily, between him and Sam Purdy. Their little heart-felt tete-a-tetes were icky, sappy and felt really fake. Do men talk like this? Even a shrink and a cop, who might live more on the emotional edge than your average Joe? Eh, I didn’t buy it and the scenes went on and on and on like they were in a marriage counseling session. Alan describes one of these talks as an “interlude of intimacy”. Yuk.

Because this book takes place far into the series, there’s a lot of backstory that was alluded to, but not fully explained. As a reader of other long series, I appreciate that and didn't really hold it against White. The whole Jonas situation, while in need of progress for the series as a whole, was distracting and dull. Also the deal with his wife going to Europe to find the kid she gave up for adoption. I didn’t care.

Beyond the problem with the plot was the choppy and very unrhythmic writing. It had no grace, elegance or balance. The best way for me to judge this is to read out loud. If I stumble a lot and get hung up in the sentences; it’s bad. If writing is fluid and graceful I hardly ever make a mistake reading aloud. Damn if I could hardly get through two choked sentences together. Strange word choices and repetitions made me stop and take notice - not a good thing. Plus there were lots of editing problems in my edition which added to the awkward feel. So I guess you can tell this will be my first and last Stephen White book. show less

I've liked other books in the Alan Gregory series but this one not so much. My main complaints were:

1) It was hard to grasp what was going on at the beginning because two stories - one about a bunch of 20-somethings hiking in the Grand Canyon and the other about psychologist Alan Gregory - are told in alternating chapters. Exactly how these stories relate was not clear until several chapters in.

2) Several of the characters are oddly developed. Kanyn's sole purpose for being in the book, for example, seems to be so the author could use the term trichotillomania.

3) Alan Gregory’s marital issues perhaps make sense if one has read the preceding book in the series (I have not), but otherwise it’s hard to grasp why he is putting the show more moves on every woman he meets while his wife, Lauren, is practically absent from the book, having embarked on a trip to Europe. show less

Dead Time, by Stephen White finds the main character, Dr. Alan Gregory is a state of flux. His wife and daughter are heading to Europe in search of her long lost daughter, his newly adopted son, Jonas, is heading to New York to spend time with Jonas' maternal uncle's family, his old friend Sam is drifting away. Alan's ex wife enters the picture, a slightly narcissistic news producer and asks Alan for his help. Our good Dr. spends a good portion of this book with a slightly confused, bemused air. He seems to have some difficulty following what is happening all around him and this gives the book a mildly distracting flavor.

The book was set in Boulder, New York and LA, and I enjoyed the descriptions of the cities. However, due to the show more confused demeanor of the main character, I found myself slipping into a sort of daydream mode myself. Perhaps because I live in Southern Cal and am familiar with the locations in the book, I couldn't help but wonder how interesting it might be if Mr. White teamed up with Jonathan Kellerman for a novel. I'd sort of love to see the interaction between Drs. Gregory and Delaware, and I'd love to see how Sam Purdy and Milo Sturgis would get along.

Not the best White, but pretty good. Worth the time to read, especially if you're a fan of the series. It moves the series along nicely. show less

The latest in Stephen White’s Alan Gregory series of novels continues his recent trend of shifting between multirple perspectives among the various protagonists, always settling and centering on Boulder pysychologist Gregory.

“Dead Time” weaves together three perspectives as it slowly unravels the mystery of what happened years before when some friends camped out on the floor of the Grand Canyon. A woman disappeared under strange circumstances and has never been found since. What happened to her and the impact it had on the friendships of those on the trip plays a significant role for the rest of the novel.

The other threads slip back and forth between first-person perspective of Alan and his ex-wife Meredith. Meredith comes back show more into Alan’s wife when she attends a funeral of an old friend in Colorado and later when Alan visits New York for a few weeks with his newly adopted son. Meredith needs Alan’s help to look into disappearance of the surrogate mother she and her fiancee are using. Both the surrogate and the fiancee were part of the trip to the floor of the Grand Canyon.

What unfolds next is a series of revelations at a fairly reasonable rate, all grounded and set up by the early stages of the novel. And while the central mystery of what happened or what it means to the characters today isn’t exactly the most original mystery storyline around, it’s still compelling enough to keep reader interest as the pages turn.

What is far more interesting is the shifting perspective between Alan and his ex-wife and how they see the world and each other. Also, readers of the series will know that Alan’s current marriage is on dicey ground and following Alan’s struggles with tempations as he and his wife are geographically separated for the summer is intriguing. The real meat of the story comes from the glimpses and justifications as well as the blindness to faults he’d find in patients that Alan undergoes as the story unfolds.

And once the central mystery wraps up, there are still a few revelations about Alan’s personal life to come that are clearly setting things up for the next installment. It’s not quite as “holy cow, I’ve got to know what’s next” as the developments to Inspector Thomas Lynley in Elizabeth George’s novels, but it’s still enough to make the year or so wait between this book and the next an interesting one. show less

In Dead Time, Dr. Alan Gregory is trying to adjust to his new life with his newly adopted son, when his ex-wife turns up asking for Alan’s help in finding the woman who is supposed to be the surrogate mom for her. This disappearance is linked to a camping trip at the Grand Canyon that happened years earlier when another woman had gone missing. As what usually happens in these novels, Alan turns to his friend and detective Sam Purdy. They interview the participants of this camping trip and find that none of the people are willing to be helpful in the investigation.
I wasn’t a big fan of this novel. I found it to be quite convoluted. It was mostly just back and forth talking to different people, analyzing the information, and not a show more whole lot happening. There was also to much of Alan’s personal life injected into the novel, which really slowed the pace down. It was slow and plodding and the mystery was not terribly interesting. I’ve generally found Stephen White to be mediocre, and this novel is less than mediocre. This might be one you want to skip.
Carl Alves – author of Blood Street show less