Why would your old family doctor, whom you hadn’t seen in at least 30 years, ask his wife to deliver an envelope, containing a list of apparently unrelated and unfamiliar names to you, after his death? That’s the question confronting the unnamed narrator of this outstanding Hitchcockian thriller from Yanno (In the Matter of Michael Vogel). A highly intelligent man who once had a successful career as an author and professor, he’s now retired and not doing much of anything. This uninspired routine ends when his secretary passes on messages from the widow of Dr. Condon, the narrator’s former pediatrician, advising him of the doctor’s passing and pleading for him to attend the funeral. When he meets her, she gives him a list of 12 names and a note from the dead man telling him that he would know what to do after finding out what the names have in common. His reluctance to comply changes quickly after a dramatic development that has him fleeing for his life. The twists are surprising but plausible, and the spare prose a good match for the fast-moving plot. (BookLife)
"THE SMART ONE is a whip-smart suspense novel in every way. The premise is ingenious, the twists clever, and the plot quick and sharp."
I thought this was an excellent book! I liked the main character right off the bat and since threats and deaths begin almost immediately upon this man taking on "the list" you are prepared for the long haul of finding out just what is so important about this list of people who seemingly have nothing in common. This book is a real page turner with enough twists and turns to carry you through to the well done ending! Even thougb most characters in the book have no name, this hit me at the end of the book when I went to do my review, it is a vey well done mystery! I highly recommend this very suspenseful book!
This book is brilliant, I loved it. I read a lot, and this was so good that it goes straight into my top five reads of the year. Aside from the fact it was written incredibly well, the story was so clever, so gripping, and just so bloody exciting that I was reading way past my normal lights out time each night. And it was so authentic - the hero does stuff that you or I would do, and then some stuff that we wish we'd thought to do. Really clever plotting revolving around just a normal person who stumbles into something, which results in having bad guys after him that he has to outthink, outsmart, and outrun. Unlike most books where I have to skim read the last page I'd read the previous night in order to get into the story again, I knew exactly where I'd left off and was actually going to bed earlier so I could read longer. I was utterly absorbed and entertained from begining to end.
