Kill Me [With Earbuds] »

Writers often use elements of their own personalities to craft their most-enduring characters, and Stephen White has certain done so in creating fellow-clinical psychologist Dr. Alan Gregory. However, White s electrifying series of crime thrillers aren t likely to be mistaken for autobiographies anytime soon.

Throw out everything you think you know about twists, turns, and surprises.
Get ready for the next big thing.
Get ready to meet the Death Angels.

We've all been there. A loved one or a dear friend becomes desperately ill or is tragically injured. Someone - maybe even you - says, "If that ever happens to me, I wish someone would just . . . kill me."

What if you could choose when to die?

But once you decide, you can't change your mind.

Ever.

No matter what.

Welcome to the next step in the evolution of suspense fiction, to an in-your-face/what-would-you-do? topical thriller. Kill Me is a brilliantly conceived roller-coaster ride that zeros in on some of the most contentious issues of our time, the human yearning for connection between the choices we make about our lives and deaths.

Kill Me brings Alan Gregory face-to-face with the most challenging case of his career. As always, White's characters are indelible and the dialogue is dead-on, but Kill Me is fresh and thought provoking in a way that's so uncommon in crime fiction. Kill Me delivers on all the promise of White's earlier work and then raises the bar in an unforgettably inventive tale of life and death. This is the book that you won't be able to put down, but more to the point, this is the book that won't go away. Listeners will be asking each other: "What would you do?" "If you could sign up — really - would you?"

Publishers Weekly

Bestseller White (Missing Persons) takes an endlessly debatable question-at what point would a decline in your quality of life cause you to want to end your life?-and leverages it into a clever, absorbing thriller. The anonymous narrator is in his prime, a happily married father of a young girl given to high-risk sports. An assortment of grim fates and a near-escape of his own make him consider the question. A shadowy group called Death Angel Inc. contracts to guarantee that if the life of the "insured" should reach a certain agreed-upon level, they will terminate that life. Fascinated and impressed by the Death Angels' knowledge and reach, he eventually negotiates terms with them. This Faustian bargain doesn't take long to reveal its dark side, and White pays almost equal attention to the philosophical and the physical as his hero has to both approach the conditions that would trigger his contract's death clause yet remain healthy enough to fight back. Some finely scripted action scenes build to a telegraphed ending that weakens the book only slightly. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.