The Girl with a Clock for a Heart audiobook

** spoiler alert ** George had imagined this moment many times but had somehow never imagined the outcome. Liana was not simply an ex-girlfriend who had once upon a time broken George’s heart; she was also, as far as George still knew, a wanted criminal, a woman whose transgressions were more in line with those of Greek tragedy than youthful indiscretion. She had, without doubt, murdered one person and most likely murdered another. George felt the equal weights of moral responsibility and indecision weigh down upon him. There are lies, damned lies and then there is Liana Dector, falsehood on feet, the sort of dame who puts the fatale in femme fatale. Of course she was also George’s long lost sweetheart from college, the one. George is a decent sort, an unexceptional guy who had the misfortune to cross paths with the wrong woman at a tender age, and never really recovered. She is the one who has been haunting his dreams ever since, the one for whom he would drop all others, the one for whom he would do anything, really, anything. When she walks back into his life what she asks does not seem all that much, really. Of course if it hadn’t been all that much, then George might have been spared a whole lotta trouble. He’d known he was going to say yes to Liana even before he knew what it was that she wanted. He’d known the moment he’d let her into his apartment. He also knew that Liana was as trustworthy as a startled snake. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity - from britannica.com I am sure there are more than a few of us, particularly we gullible guys, who have a page of our private books dedicated to one person in particular, the one who broke our hearts the worst, the ones who came into, or more likely passed through, our lives at a point when the people we were becoming had not yet formed, when the clay was still damp, and left an impression, like a teen tagger in wet concrete. How does that scarring affect the rest of our lives? What directions do we take, or avoid, as a result? Two words work to describe George Foss once Liana returns to wrapping her desires around his dreams, poor bastard. Peter Swanson - image from his Instagram pagesThe story is told in two time lines. The earlier covers the time when Liana and George first got together, in college, and George’s attempt to find out what was really going on with his gf of a semester when she takes a powder. This includes learning about Liana’s life in her Florida home. The latter, and larger stream is contemporary, and includes a crooked ex boyfriend from whom Liana snatched half a mill, an impressively violent enforcer sort, George’s on-again-off-again gf, a mysterious house well off the beaten path, and a payload of diamonds.There is indeed a mystery here. Can anything Liana says be believed? What is the truth of her tales, both now and in the past? What is the nature of her relationship with her erstwhile bf and with the thuggish Donnie Jenks? Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon - Image was taken from Oscars.orgA few cops cross the stage but there is no primary PI in this noir tale. This book is less Raymond Chandler, and more North by Northwest. Liana’s favorite book is Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, and you might extract some value by keeping that in mind. George has a cat named Nora, which might be a nod to The Thin Man, which featured Nick and Nora Charles. But I expect that one is a stretch. Are the references to hot and cold calculated nods to The Postman Always Rings Twice, or are we going all taffy-like again? Liana is a person with several aliases, and that always makes one suspect there is content in here about identity. How do we become who we are? Can that change? What if people cannot or do not accept us for who we are? Can we ever get away from who we were? Notions of this sort abound. I had become this different person, this person I’d rather have been—you know, in school, doing well, with a boyfriend, a boyfriend like you—but it was like I had a secret disease, or there was this clock inside of me, ticking like a heart, and at any moment an alarm would go off and [the girl I was then] would no longer exist. She’d die and I’d have to go back to being Liana Dector. There are always some hesitations. I thought the notion of the book’s title was less than meets the eye. Few of the subsidiary characters come to life, much. But when you are flipping through pages as fast as I did and you will, such things generate as much concern as notions of morality to a sociopath. The Girl With a Clock For a Heart is a must-read thriller. Once you pick it up you will not be able to put it down, unless of course, that special someone from that special time all those years back should show up at your favorite reading spot and ask you for a favor. One look in those eyes and you know you won’t be able to say “no.” Lauren Bacall - From noirwhale.com==============================INTERVIEWPeter Swanson graciously agreed to answer a few questions about his book. The responses here have been only minimally edited:PLACEHow important is place in The GirlWhat’s most important is the difference, class and otherwise, between New England and the fictional Sweetgum, Florida. Liana wants to reinvent herself, and part of that is leaving the town she lived in and never coming back. And when George visits Sweetgum it is important that he is out of his element. Could it have taken place in locations other than Connecticut, Boston/New Essex, Florida? The important thing would be the differences between the locations. The book is currently under option by a British film company, and writer/director James Marsh is working on an adaptation. I spoke with him about setting the story in England, which is his plan right now. He wants to substitute Oxford for Boston and a seaside town in East Anglia for Sweetgum. I thought this completely worked. Why Tulum, and not, say Rio, Cancun, or the French Riviera? The short answer is that I’ve been to Tulum and haven’t been to Rio or the French Riviera. The longer answer is that I just think there’s something incredibly evocative about Tulum, those Mayan ruins hovering above the ocean. WRITINGOn your blogger profile, you list yourself as a writer of crime fiction and poetry.  Which came first? Poetry came first. I’ve been writing it since I was a kid, and for most of my twenties and thirties I worked very hard at becoming the best poet I could be. I’m not sure that worked out quite the way I had planned, but I wrote a few poems that, when I read them today, don’t make me physically ill. So that’s good. Do they get equal time or is one dominant? Right now, fiction is entirely dominant. I only write poetry now when I get an idea for a poem, and that happens very infrequently. I think I’m tapped out on poems. I don’t really write confessional poetry—e.g. Grandpa’s funeral, running into ex-girlfriend, etc.—so I sometimes feel like I’ve said all I can say in poetry form. This is one of the reasons I decided to do The Hitchcock Sequence, a sonnet for every Hitchcock film. It gave me a subject matterYou have written a lot of short crime fiction. Have you considered other genres, say police procedural, or horror or sci-fi? I’ve written some horror short fiction and a little bit of sci-fi. It’s a matter of ideas, more than anything, and almost all of the ideas I get fall into the realm of mystery/crime. I like the idea of writing a solid police procedural but that involves a lot of research, and I’m pretty lazy about research. When did you decide you wanted to write novels? I started writing novels about ten years ago. At first, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I wrote a classic whodunit in which the amateur detective is a visiting writer/poet at a university. It was hard work, but more than that, it was a lot of fun. I loved spending a year in one fictional world, and I loved the feeling of finishing the novel, getting to the last page. When did you start working on this one? Was it a prolonged gestation? The Girl with a Clock for a Heart began life as a novella. It was essentially the college-years section of the book. My agent was the one who suggested that it could be turned into a book. The whole process probably took about two and a half years. You are writing sonnets for all of Alfred Hitchcock's films. Is that project complete? All the sonnets are written, although a few them definitely need to be tweaked, or even re-written. I’ve been sending the poems out individually to journals and online magazines, and several have been published. At some point I’ll see if I can find a publisher for the whole sequence. What impact did Hitchcock's work have on your writing in The Girl?Hitchcock is my favorite filmmaker, and he’s a big influence for that reason alone. Out of his 53 films there are at least ten or so that I re-watch frequently so they just seep in. James Marsh commented to me that he thought there was a real Vertigo vibe going on in The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, and that was news to me, although maybe he’s right. Definitely Irene is based on Midge, the Barbara Bel Geddes character from Vertigo. THE GIRL What was the spark that started your engine in writing The Girl?I was thinking about the difference between going to college now and going to college when I did, back in the 1980s. Nowadays, most teens have an established online identity. When you arrive as a freshman and meet someone new you probably run back to your room and look them up on facebook and find out everything about them. But in the olden days all these kids arrived in college, and they had a real opportunity to reinvent themselves. No one knew anything about anyone. That was the spark that led me to wondering how far a freshman year re-invention could go. When you were writing did you have particular faces in mind, people you know, relatives, neighbors, actors? I do and I don’t. Usually, when I start writing a character, I picture what they look like, often using actors, but as I keep writing that connection seems to fade. As I said before, when I pictured Irene in this book I was picturing Midge from Vertigo. Short blonde hair, glasses. But she’s the only character in the book that I had a real specific person I thought about. Barbara Bel Geddes as Midge in Vertigo I heard that there is a sequel in the works, There actually isn’t. The book I’m working on right now is a new standalone thriller. I would write a sequel but I would need to come up with an idea first that would get the characters back together, and that hasn’t happened yet. TECHNIQUEWhat is your physical writing methodology re when and how long? I work at home in the morning, on my computer. I write 500 words a day on whatever it is I happen to be working on. That makes it sound like I’m incredibly disciplined but I do a whole lot of procrastinating before I start to write. Sometimes it’s reading, and sometimes it’s looking at mindless stuff online, or playing Candy Crush on my phone, but after doing that for a while, I eventually settle down into writing. I write my 500 words and then I quit. The most important part for me is that I’m writing every day, plus I think it’s important to read what you’ve written that day before you fall asleep. A lot of work can get done during a good night’s sleep. In that case there are a lot of us who are incredibly productive. Thanks so much, Peter, for so generously offering your time.  Best of luck with The Girl. I hope a lot of people get a chance to read it.  Publication Date - February 4, 2014 ==============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and FB pagesSwanson’s web site has a cornucopia of samples of his Hitchcock poems, other poetry, short fiction and non-fiction, and is well worth checking outArmchair Audience is Swanson’s site for writing on “Books read. Movies seen. TV Watched”A fun site that deals in you-know-what, noirwhale.com, which includes a lovely list of further links

”I always knew it was temporary. Being Audrey was temporary. I had become this different person, this person I’d rather have been--you know, in school, doing well, with a boyfriend, a boyfriend like you--but it was like I had a secret disease, or there was this clock inside of me, ticking like a heart, and at any moment an alarm would go off and Audrey Beck would no longer exist. She’d die and I’d have to go back to being Liana Decter. God, it’s like a dream now….” With this book title Peter Swanson was paying homage to other noir books.I have a crazy girlfriend story.I have an even better crazy stalker story, but I’m not going to tell you about either one of them because George Foss has a better story, a tale of deceit, a yarn woven with woe, a first love that might have lasted forever, and murder most foul. George is an ordinary guy, maybe so ordinary that you might even think he is extraordinary. He is in his early forties. He keeps the accounting books for a Boston literary magazine. He made himself indispensable, so even when the inevitable downsizing started to leave empty desks and tragically orphaned coffee mugs in it’s wake, he survived. He has a girlfriend named Irene though girlfriend might be imprecise. They have been friends a long time, but somehow in the long arc of their relationship things never quite came together for them to get married. They are more than friends with benefits, more like ex-spouses who still like each other and fool around with each other between attempts at relationships with other people. Although even when they are seeing other people there is no let up with seeing each other. One could say their relationship is complicated, but really it is rather uncomplicated. George has this rent controlled attic apartment with slanted walls and too many, just enough, bookshelves stuffed with...wait for it...books. Exactly what BOOKshelves were designed to hold. He goes to the same bar, maybe not everyday but most days, and watches the Red Sox. Irene usually meets him there and they give each other updates on the small matters of their well organized lives. And then he sees her...in his bar. The girl he’d tried to forget about.The girl that was unforgettable. Audrey Beck/Liana Decker or she could have just as easily been Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity) /Kitty Collins(The Killers)/ Brigid O'Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon) She is a witches’ brew of femme fatales. She is the Mata Hari of George Foss’s life. He knew her as Audrey first until he discovered she was Liana. It is now becoming nearly impossible to shed our skins and assume new identities. We used to be able to ride the train from Kansas to California and somewhere around Arizona start to call ourselves by a different name. Those days are long past as we are compressed more and more into our own identities. We are stuck with ourselves unable to shake off our past or ever really get a fresh start. Don’t get the impression that I’m feeling any sympathy for Liana because that would be a mistake. Like a moth to the flame he has to go talk to her, after all, she was sitting in HIS BAR. She needs help. She needs the kind of help that at first you laugh about and then she convinces you with glistening tears and a series of beautifully manipulated body signals that she is desperate. Thus, it became perfectly logical that George was going to return nearly half a million stolen dollars to her ex-boss, ex-lover for her. That is crazy!Why would you even contemplate such a thing George?It is embarrassing for me to reveal this, and it is hard to explain it in such a way that it doesn’t seem stupid, but ultimately, he did it, because he wanted to get laid. Sex and gasoline make the world go around so don’t discount the importance of such a potential event in a forty something man’s life. And it isn’t as if we are just talking about sex, ordinary sex, this was mind blowing sex...fireworks, brass band playing, howling at the moon sex. This was one of those moments that when we are on our deathbed and the sepia tone memory of this event floats into focus that we will grin. It might even take some of the sting out of dying. Was it worth the punch to the kidneys compliments of Donnie Jenks? No, of course not. Yes, yes, of course it was. So you piss blood for a week. It will heal. Ava Gardner in The Killers. A man would do a lot of foolish things for a woman like that.This is a plot driven novel, so I can’t talk about the plot. Let’s just say that George Foss gets taken on the ride of his life and if he survives it you will buy the beers for him all night long to hear the story. You will remember Liana Decker’s name for the rest of your life. Every time she swims into your memory you will shake your head, shiver, and thank all that is holy for your amazingly pedestrian significant other. This was a terrific, perfect Sunday afternoon read. I kept muttering to myself and kept flipping pages. The ending will wake you up in the middle of the night and have you exclaiming...no, it can’t be!Peter Swanson hit the Hollywood lottery. The movie rights have been sold. James Marsh will be directing. Chris Coen will be producing. It should make a spectacular movie. ***4.25 stars out of 5 and rising.***If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

FOUR STARSPeter Swanson is one of my favorite psychological suspense/thriller writers working today. Two of his books have been optioned for film, including this one. His newest book All the Beautiful Lies is due out April 3, 2018. I have the galley sitting on my Kindle and cannot wait to dive in! Before I start that one, I wanted to go back and read the only Swanson I've missed: THE GIRL WITH A CLOCK FOR A HEART, his first novel. Swanson tends to write very strong female characters into his tightly woven stories and this is no exception. Hooray! In this case, we have a kind of bumbling, sleepy protagonist, George Foss, who somehow has to get himself out of a messy entanglement with his ex-college girlfriend. Liana Decter is no ordinary ex either. You might look at her as a black widow who changes her appearance and her identity whenever necessary and uses men for her own gain. Or is she really a misunderstood, hot date that our boy George has always dreamed about meeting again?George does, indeed, get caught in Liana's web of lies and it is so much fun trying to figure out this sticky story. The even pacing of the mystery had me flipping the pages like fire. I've read some interviews with the author and he says that Hitchcock films are one of his great loves. You can really feel the Hitchcock vibe in this timeless story with a definite Swanson twist.Totally engrossing, I inhaled this book. As with all Swanson books, I adore the cleverly worded title . I can't give it 5 stars though due to THAT ENDING!I literally was reading the end over and over...saying NO, NO, NO. Rats! I'm really not a fan of that kind of ending. Curious, now? No more hints, you gotta check it out yourself!

While shopping in my local Waterstones I saw this book and something about it drew me in. I am not sure if it was the book title or the write up but I knew I just had to read it. I finished it within 2 days and thoroughly enjoyed it. Fast paced full of action and a touch of romance. Full of twists and turns and cliff hangers at the end of chapters.

fulfilling my 2019 goal to read (at least) one book each month that has been digitally moldering, unread, on my NOOK for years and years and years.this brings my 2019 NOOK project 'round full-circle, as i started it off in january with The Kind Worth Killing, a different book by this guy...

Twisty, dangerous, full of intrigue and very well told. "The Girl with a clock for a Heart" is like a pitch black coffee that's bitter but enriching, strong and captivating - a jolt that drives you through the most stressful day on skinny, scurry, scary fast spider legs while flipping page after page.Peter Swanson definitely knows how to wrap a reader's attention into never-ending plot development. Even at the very end, when you're on your last page and supposedly almost done with the story...a whole new chapter of imagination begins. SHE is the kind of woman every man wishes to meet, and every woman wishes her man had met before meeting her.

I'm new to Peter Swanson's books and have read them in backwards order this year starting with his latest, Her Every Fear, then The Kind Worth Killing and finally this one, his first. I've enjoyed all three--obviously I've been hooked by his suspenseful style or I wouldn't have bothered to read them all, right? Something about the eponymous girl, Liana Decter, has haunted George Foss for twenty years. He met her on his first day of college and soon they were inseparable. But after Christmas break, she's gone and his heart is broken. Even after he learns the nasty truth about her, he unconsciously watches for her everywhere, thinks he sees her in crowds, on the street, on the beach. So when, twenty years later, he sees her sitting on a stool in his favorite Boston bar, looking as beautiful and alluring as ever, he can hardly believe his eyes. He leaves the bar with his date but returns alone and finally gets up the nerve to approach her. She is not there by accident; she has a favor to ask of him. Will he meet her the next day to talk about it? And slowly but surely he finds himself drawn into her web of deceit and lies. A great page turner! I enjoyed the way the author unfolded the back story slowly while the suspense built in the present. Poor George! I am reminded of the Robin Williams quip: “The problem is, God gave man a brain and a penis and only enough blood to run one at a time.”

Thanks to my local library I have finally read this. I have read all of this authors other books.. this one was just as good.

It's not an issue on my own book review blog, but other websites at which I post reviews don't have an option of fractional ratings, so for them I rounded off my real rating of 3.5 stars to 4 instead of going the other direction - although to be honest, the latter crossed my mind. What didn't I like? For one thing, everything that happened seemed more than a little too contrived. For another, I can't imagine a real-life grown man being so gullible - time after time after time - no matter how head-over-heels in lust he thinks he is.Apparently, the book has been optioned for a motion picture, though - and when I envision that, I'm pretty sure it would make a decent one. Looking back, most of the scenes would, I think, translate well to the silver screen (I'll vote for Ben Affleck as love-struck "boyfriend" George Foss.I put "boyfriend" in quotes, BTW, because the word barely qualifies. Back in college in Boston, George had a brief fling with fellow student named Audrey - a fling he clearly took far more seriously than she. Now, 20 years after she vanished from his life, he sees a woman who looks like her and flips out all over again. Surprise: Turns out it's really her, although she now goes by the name of Jane. The bigger problem is that she's wanted by the police as the prime suspect in a long-ago murder (yes, George has known that fact for years but - another surprise - he shoves it aside in the hope that he can rekindle the college relationship that flamed out when she disappeared).From there, for George, at least, it's downhill all the way. Not just once, but several times, Jane (who George now knows really is a woman named Liana from Florida) begs him to help get her out of a bind - and he agrees despite knowing that the long-ago murder he's now convinced she really did commit may be just the tip of the iceberg. The chapters shift from present to that brief college fling, and I found myself almost looking forward to the earlier periods. On reflection, I decided that anticipation was in part because I could understand the college-student hormones that were in play back then and wasn't constantly mumbling, as I did in the present, "For God's sake, George, grow a set!" each time Audrey/Jane/Liana made her latest demand and he quickly acquiesced.The ending, which in a very real sense isn't an ending at all (another bit of a sore point), was totally predictable.Still, as I said at the beginning, the book is very well written and it all flows smoothly (well, except perhaps for those college-year chapters that are in all italics and thus more of a chore to deal with on the Kindle). It's definitely worth reading - keep in mind it's relatively short as books go - and it's for sure I'll be among the first to go see the movie if and when it happens.

3.75/5A good heist-based thriller with lots of twists along the way. I've recently become a fan of conman fiction, because I don't think I have the brain power equipped to actually develop and carry out cons myself haha. I am always surprised by them. I do understand the monologuing at the very end, but it was unfortunate how everything had to be spelled out to the reader. This is the second Peter Swanson book I have read, and my question so far for him is: What woman hurt you??

This is an intriguing story about Liana Decter/Audrey/Jane and George Foss. Who is Liana? What is she up to? George meets ‘Audrey’ at college and they fall in love. Well, he did. Did she? Who knows. Without revealing the story after one term they don’t see each other for a long time when she reappears into George’s life and asks for his help which he duly gives. What follows is like an episode of Hustle and instead of the handsome Adrian Lester you have Liana etc and her sidekick ‘Donnie Jenks’. Although the storyline stretches credulity, it is none the less very enjoyable and well written with a good ending that leaves you hanging and wondering!

Thoroughly enjoyable twisty turny thriller which I enjoyed VERY much. And the author's new novel coming next year "The Kind Worth Killing" is even better. Now very much on my "must read authors" list. Full review to follow.

This is a nice little thriller about corrupted identity & why, even if you're still pining over your first college love, if you're pretty sure she's a murderer, you should not entangle yourself in her life several years after your relationship ended. Liana, who George originally knew as Audrey, shows up one day at his favorite bar, calling herself Jane & needing help. She's pretty & manipulative & ensnares George in a plot that has more delicious, flaky layers than a fresh-baked croissant (I think I need to go have lunch). I was planning to give it a little more love until I got to the last page. (view spoiler)[Liana is still alive, says George! I am going to track her down at all costs! There will clearly be a sequel, because the author blurb says that he's working on his second novel! Although maybe I'm totally wrong about a sequel; I'm just now thinking that it would be pretty awesome for Swanson to end with "She was alive" and go on to have a writing career that has nothing at all to do with George Foss or Liana Decter, leaving us all to ponder how exactly she survived having her feet tied to a concrete block & getting dumped over the edge of a boat in the middle of the ocean or whether Liana was just a sociopath since she thought that killing Audrey could've ended well in any possible way. (hide spoiler)] Either way, I enjoyed this enough that I'd read more by this author in the future.Aaaaannd, just read an author interview wherein he states that there is no sequel! From three stars to four in the blink of an eye.

All the stars from me! I’m utterly shocked my fellow good readers rated this overall at 3.35 stars. By reading through a few reviews it seems if the reader read Swanson’s later works first that this one came up lacking. Since I am brand new to Swanson (Thanks Amanda! ☺️), this was an absolute reading bonanza for me. I so resonated with George in his little attic apartment with bookshelves and Nora the cat. He creates deep contentment in me. It also becomes obvious that Swanson is a bibliophile for the references to beloved titles written in to the story. And I will go on record to say I believe George’s story hook, line and sinker (pun intended). I love his love for Audrey for all its destructiveness. That’s true love. I love his duplicity in his love for steady Irene too. The heist plot! Perfection. For me, this was a modern day Christie style novel and when an author can pull it off it is pure genius. “Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.” Off to find more Peter Swanson now!