Detailed plot synopsis reviews of The Good Samaritan |
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That still didn't explain why he didn't kill her too. It all seems very arbitrary.
Anyway, back to the present. Laura shows up at the house where Steven says he will be, so she can watch him hang himself. She brings a knife, just in case.
But when she gets there she finds hundreds of photos of herself on the wall, and Steven is there but is waiting to kill Laura, not himself. It seems Steven knows that Laura has been killing people and now Steven wants to kill her for her crime.
Laura's groin "gets warm" and she pees in her pants. Heh heh heh.
Steven tries to put her head in the noose but Laura stabs him with the knife and then runs away. She falls for a moment and injures her head and bleeds a little.
Click here to see the rest of this reviewThe next chapter seems to be a flashback to the time that Laura got married to a woman named Charlotte and got her pregnant.
WAIT A MINUTE!
What's going on here? Was Laura really a man? Suddenly I realized that this chapter is about a completely different person named Ryan. It's true that on top of the chapter was the word "RYAN" in big letters, but I thought it meant that the chapter would be about Laura's interaction with a guy named Ryan. It isn't. Without warning, we switched POV in a totally unannounced way.
Ok, so the time is several months earlier when Ryan marries Charlotte. He has to use a Dr. Frankenstein lab to impregnate her because he can't bone her effectively enough on his own.
But once Charlotte gets pregnant she also gets depressed. She made a lot of manure and liked to hang around the toilet. Then she calls the suicide hotline and Laura persuaded her to jump off a cliff (with David).
Ok, so now the next 100 pages or so feature the process where Ryan slowly realizes that Charlotte was killed, and slowly starts to investigate who she called during this time, and slowly starts to investigate the suicide hotline, and slowly starts to realize that Laura is the one who killed Charlotte.
But these 100 pages were totally boring because we, the readers, already know what Ryan is searching for. It's rarely interesting to read the exposition of a story we know the ending of, unless the exposition itself is interesting. And here, in a by the books investigation, it isn't. Ninety of these hundred pages are skippable, a disappointing turn for a book that started out so strongly. Ryan's character and situation could have been introduced in a fraction of these pages.
Anyway, fast forward to the confrontation between Ryan (who pretended to be Steven on the phone with Laura) and Laura.
Laura rushes to a police station and shows them her minor head wound. She fills out a report claiming she was attacked in the park. She believes this will give her an alibi for the time she was with Ryan. Evidently Laura, and the author of this book, have no idea what an alibi is. An alibi is where SOMEONE ELSE can verify where you were at a critical time. This is no alibi.
Laura decides to wait for Steven or whatever his name is to attack her again. If she had half a brain, she could have tracked him down easily, simply by looking up the owner of the house where she was attacked! Laura, who had tremendous investigative expertise in other matters, never thought to do this.
Ryan/Steven, who has been stabbed in the stomach by Laura, goes to the hospital. He claims he got a stab wound while removing floorboards in his home. His weak excuse convinces the hospital he is lying, but they simply think he tried to kill himself.
Laura is called to school because Effie's teacher says she is having trouble. It turns out that Effie's teacher is Ryan/Steven. Ryan, you see, knows that Effie is Laura's daughter.
This is one of the most unbelievable moments in the book. What are the odds that Laura helps kill Ryan's wife, and Ryan is a school teacher, but not just any school teacher, but the actual teacher of Laura's daughter? About a million to one against? It's extremely improbable.
But even worse, Ryan purposefully exposes his real identity to Laura. He knows Laura is a psychopath. Laura now knows that Ryan is on to her. But at least Laura does not know Ryan's real name. But now Ryan has very stupidly identified himself to Laura, who now knows Ryan's real name and where he works! Ryan does this to try to taunt Laura, but he has made himself terribly exposed. This is perhaps the most unbelievable moment of this book. When characters engage in really stupid, unrealistic behavior, the book starts to feel unrealistic as well.
Effie has a crush on Ryan. She gets Ryan to drive her home one day. She puts a hand on Ryan's leg to try to get him to bone her. But Ryan tells Effie that she is immature and to get the f out of his car.
This is Ryan's big revenge plan. His big, tremendous revenge plan, to call Effie immature. Once Laura hears that Ryan has called his daughter immature she will go crazy. This is Ryan's big revenge plan for the death of his wife.
