Icarus by Russell Andrews: book review

Icarus (2001) is a thriller is set around the fable of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death. Jack Keller, at 10 years of age, was fascinated by this tale, until his mother was viciously assaulted on the seventeenth floor of her workplace. She was a paralegal, working late in the evening, waiting for her partner to arrive. The assault by a madman, seeking revenge on a company of lawyers, sent Joan Keller plummeting through a window to her death. It occurred in front of Jack, who, though making a valiant attempt to save his mother, was left devastatingly helpless. Jack knew then that, for the rest of his life, this would be the worst thing that could ever happen to him. He knew this without a shadow of a doubt, with absolute certainty, and it was his only comfort. Never again would he feel this kind of suffering, pain or loss, or paralyzing terror.

He is raised by his mother’s partner, marries Caroline and starts a small restaurant in New York that rapidly becomes a chain throughout the country. Caroline is unable to have children and they raise Kid Demeter as their own, resulting in him becoming a well-known physiotherapist and personal trainer. As Caroline prepares to open a new restaurant in Charlottesville, a lunatic shoots Jack and Caroline in full view of their patrons. Caroline is killed instantly and Kid assists Jack to recover from his debilitating injuries. Jack relies on Kid, just as he relied on his mother thirty years previously when his father abandoned them. Kid then mysteriously falls to his death, just like Jack’s mother. The police blame drugs but Jack doesn’t believe that theory.

Kid has had a string of women: The Mortician, the Mistake, the Destination, the Murderess and so on. Jack is sure that one of them knew of his own trauma as a young boy and premeditated the crime to avenge a dispute with him. Jack is convinced that Kid was murdered to punish him and he sets out to find the murderer.

The message is simple: each betrayal begins with trust. It is well written, fast paced, and intriguingly interesting for its genre.

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