From Booklist

Carl and Jessie Jensen are enjoying their retirement in the remote reaches of Maine until a stranded camper named Jonah arrives at their front door. While the kindhearted couple senses menace in the young man’s eyes, they invite him to stay for dinner and spend the night. (Both wonder if Jonah is a friend of their mentally troubled daughter, Sylvie, who escaped from an area psychiatric home earlier that day.) The Jensens’ worst fears are confirmed the following morning, as Jonah takes the pair hostage, insistent that he is fulfilling the wishes of God. The simmering scenario reaches a rolling boil as Jonah forces Carl, a French Gypsy who survived the Nazi concentration camps, to explain the patchwork of scars on his back and the German inscription on his violin. Jessie, meanwhile, plays mind games with Jonah as she furiously searches for a means of escape. Maine resident Thayer–Strong for Potatoes (1999), A Certain Slant of Light (2001)–creates relentless suspense in this taut literary chiller that pits the mad against the sane. Allison Block

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