Suddenly thrust into a bizarre world where all fingers point to him, Herbert begins to believe his is guilty. Then he tells his attorney that he was adopted and things start falling into place. Herbert must play a cat and mouse game with himself to save his own life from the certainty of the hangman. And he is not so much pathetic as luckless. The screenplay structure achieves surprising success, its terse, tag-less dialogue cascading across the electronic page like an Outback waterfall.
Minimal description is as efficient as a surgeon's precise incision.
The mention of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, which Deliver Us from Evil vaguely resembles, reveals Reid's literary intentions. And they succeed admirably. Bill Gagliani is the author of Shadowplays, an e-book collection of dark fiction from Ebooksonthe.net.