The Animal Hour
by Andrew Klavan
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Description
Voices invade a young woman's head, compelling her to kill When Nancy Kincaid comes into work, an unfamiliar woman tells her to leave. This is Nancy Kincaid's office, the woman says, but you are not Nancy Kincaid. As Nancy protests, her memory grows fuzzy and her reason seems to slip away. None of her workmates recognize her, and she is distracted by a voice in her head that suggests she shoot them all. Ejected from her office, she collects herself in the park. A homeless man pesters her, show more mumbling that at eight o'clock--the animal hour--there is someone she has to kill. Over and over she tells him to leave, until she finds the pistol in her purse. She kills the bum and sets off a whirlwind of insane violence that will not stop until the animal hour comes to pass. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Halloween in Manhattan. Everyone has their bad days, but for Nancy Kincaid, this will be the worst of her life. Arriving at her office, her colleagues insist they have never seen her before. The only clue she has is a voice that whispers someone will be murdered that night--by 8:00, the Animal Hour.
An opening that instantly draws you in by curiosity about the "what" and the "why" of the story and a breakneck pace kept me turning the pages. And while it's fun to be somewhat frustrated while reading a thriller - because that frustration stems from not knowing all the answers and having to discover and decipher clues and evidence - this one pushed me to my limit.
Then the big reveal in which we're given the answer to not only the main show more mystery but a secondary mystery we didn't even know was a mystery until its big reveal at the end. Plausible within the story itself but a bit convoluted for my tastes.
Plus, there was something that just rubbed me the wrong way about how the women were portrayed in this book.
Recommended only if you're instantly hooked by having to know what's going on and what really happened even if you couldn't care less about any of the characters.
2.5 stars show less
An opening that instantly draws you in by curiosity about the "what" and the "why" of the story and a breakneck pace kept me turning the pages. And while it's fun to be somewhat frustrated while reading a thriller - because that frustration stems from not knowing all the answers and having to discover and decipher clues and evidence - this one pushed me to my limit.
Then the big reveal in which we're given the answer to not only the main show more mystery but a secondary mystery we didn't even know was a mystery until its big reveal at the end. Plausible within the story itself but a bit convoluted for my tastes.
Plus, there was something that just rubbed me the wrong way about how the women were portrayed in this book.
Recommended only if you're instantly hooked by having to know what's going on and what really happened even if you couldn't care less about any of the characters.
2.5 stars show less
I'm not sure what I just read. I didn't like any of the characters and I didn't like the writer's style. The beginning of the book was good, the ending of the book was good (I didn't see the ending coming!) but the middle just dragged on. Somehow this book made me feel.. dirty. I'm giving it 4 stars because honestly, despite all I've mentioned above, it was a surprisingly good book. I think.
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Murder Mysteries
57 works; 11 members
Author Information
69+ Works 6,076 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Animal Hour
- Original publication date
- 1994
- People/Characters
- Nancy Kincaid; Oliver Perkins
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA
- Epigraph
- The notion that each person is himself and can be no other, is that anything more than a convention, which arbitrarily leaves out of account all the transitions which bind the individual to the general?--THOMAS MANN
- Dedication
- This book is for Spencer
- First words
- It was going to be a lousy day. She was sure of that, even before she vanished.
- Quotations
- Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
--A.A. MILNE - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He turned away. He carried her down the stairs. Toward the masks. Toward the music. Toward the flashing lights.
- Blurbers
- Kellerman, Jonathan; Hillerman, Tony
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 160
- Popularity
- 203,643
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.35)
- Languages
- 9 — Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 22
- ASINs
- 4
