ussell Walker is not in an enviable place in his life when our story opens. Aged 55, he does undeniably possess a good job—opinion columnist for a Toronto newspaper—and plenty of material comforts in his isolated house on Heron Island just offshore from Vancouver, Canada. But the recent death of his wife, Susan, his college sweetheart, has left him inconsolable, clinically depressed and on the verge of suicide. That's the exact moment when another old acquaintance from college days unexpectedly shows up.
This new arrival is Zandor "Smelly" Zudenigo. We learn Zandor's origin story in an extended flashback to Russell's college years. Starting in 1967, Russel and Zandor were dormitory roommates, despite Zandor's horrid personal hygiene, which earned him his nickname. Russell was a budding hippie, while Zandor was a certifiable genius at math. The two young men got to be somewhat close, but hardly true friends. And some peculiar incidents during those years led Russell to conclude that Zandor could read minds, an unsettling thought. Finally, changing circumstances separated the two men, and they have not seen each other in three decades.
Zandor is back now because Russell possesses the one mind he can stand to be near for any length of time. Zandor's talent is excruciating to its owner and incapable of being turned off. Thus Zandor has been living like a hermit on a nearby deserted island for most of his post-college life. One day just recently, a personal plane happened to pass near enough to Zandor to reveal that its occupant was a serial killer intent on striking again soon. In the brief interval of contact, Zandor gleaned just enough clues from the killer's mind to make it barely possible to stymie the man. But how can Zandor approach the police with such a wild story? He needs Russell's help.
First, Zandor mentally cures Russell's depression. Then begins the frustrating hunt for the killer. With Zandor back in hiding on his island, Russell enlists the one sympathetic policewoman he meets—Hilda Mandiç—as his partner. The two begin to utilize some of the details from the killer's mind to approach his hideout. But they underestimate the killer's wariness, and soon the tables have been turned. Now the man who has made torture and sophisticated savagery his life's work is after them!
A suspenseful psionic mystery
Spider Robinson ensures instant readerly empathy with his protagonist by using a first-person narrative voice. Russell Walker is a generally amiable soul who has endured a lot of hard knocks—his spindly frame is subject to many griefs, including collapsing lungs—and emerged as a wiser soul than most. If not precisely enlightened, Russell still exhibits a maturity and philosophical outlook on life that make his various pronouncements on society sound not harsh and judgmental but rather rueful and accepting. I suspect that Russell is pretty much Spider Robinson behind a fairly transparent mask, right down to the piquant similes and propensity for outrageous punning. (The latter propensity thankfully kept mostly in check.) The immediacy of this kind of lead character and narrative voice works well to build a wide door into the story for the reader. But at the same time, it undercuts a certain measure of suspense. First-person voice equals survival. The narrator has to be around at the end of the tale. And in a thriller, that means that certain outcomes are automatically foreclosed.
Within these parameters, however, Robinson provides plenty of thrills. The eventual confrontation with the madman occupies the final quarter of the book and is taut and surprising for the whole length. The killer proves to be more than just a bogeyman, although I'm not sure his physical appearance is entirely consonant with a sense of menace. But maybe that paradox works. I would point to a couple of passages as being somewhat awkward, where three pages of interior ruminations on Russell's part intervene between suspenseful moments. Russell might say he's thinking in between the "clock cycles" of his fear, but the effect is to bring the reader's emotions to a temporary halt.
Likewise, I'm not sure that Hilda's role is large enough. She really doesn't add much to the action, and one could almost imagine writing her out of the book entirely. But when she is presented, she's vivid enough that you want more.
Readers might find echoes of Theodore Sturgeon and his work in this book, in the meditations on the kinks within every human psyche. Sturgeon's fascination with telepathy was a trope for the perils and rewards of intimacy. Robinson's crucial twist is to have the mental link happen not between lovers, but between Zandor, an honest, damaged man, and his worst nightmare. And as in Robert Parker's Wilderness (1979), Russell's role is to learn how far he will go to protect his innocent friend.
