"There is suspense and mystery in it, and plenty of plot twists."

The Cursed Man

by Keith Rommel

Genre: General Fiction Thriller

Book Synopsis

Alister Kunkle believes death is in love with him. A simple smile from friend or stranger is all it takes to encourage death to kill. With his family deceased and a path of destruction behind him, Alister sits inside a mental institution, sworn to silence and separated from the rest of the world, haunted by his inability to escape death’s preferential treatment.

But when a beautiful psychologist arrives at the institution and starts offering him care, Alister braces himself for more killings. When none follow, he tries to figure out whether he truly is insane or if death has finally come to him in the form of a woman.

Bec's Rating

Bec's Review

This is one of those books that tries to be a psychological thriller full of twists and turns and while these books are fantastic when they succeed, this particular one falls a little short. While there are twists and plot turns as you, the reader, try to work out whether Alistar is cursed, crazy or something else, what causes this book to fall well short of being up there with true suspense novels is the fact that the plot is sometimes hard to follow. There are a large number of flashbacks in this story, causing the plot to be told in a non-linear fashion. While this works well as a plot device when it works, in The Cursed Man it just doesn’t quite work, instead creating a degree of confusion in the reader when the only confusion should be in regard to just what is real.

Apart from the non-linear progression of the plot the writing itself is at times hard to follow. A lot of it is told through dialogue which at times seems to go off on tangents. Further there are some parts in the book that seem to have little significance or even relevance to the plot, such as one particular scene involving a minor character who until then doesn’t even get her own perspective. The scene comes out on nowhere and while the end of it is intended to garner suspense there is no follow through or answering scene further in the story, rather it is glossed off. Most of the other tangents the story wanders into are at least more minor than this one but there are still some points where a good critical read through may be required.

If you can get through the confusion caused by aspects on the non-linear plot not quite working, and the tangents the book sometimes wanders into, The Cursed Man is an interesting read. There is suspense and mystery in it, and plenty of plot twists. It’s only a shame that the plot itself is at times quite hard to follow, thus detracting from the legitimate confusion the reader should feel from the twists by providing confusion in keeping track of the plot itself. If you don’t mind a little confusion though then be sure to give this one a try.

Disclaimer: Not recommended for children due to violence.