The scan didn’t work so great, because the jacket is in a plastic wrapper. I got it from a dealer for the princely sum of $2, a score indeed. It’s in great shape, and appears to be unread. Curiously, it appears that a drop of blood fell on the upper edge of the pages.
One of Mr. Westlake’s non-crime books (although I’m sure there’s some crime in it) and one I have not yet read. Have any of you?
Here is the jacket text:
Jack Pine was born to be a Hollywood star. He has no morals, no scruples; he will not hesitate to do anything or love anyone if it might advance his career, get him the best roles, or project him evermore firmly into the spotlight.
And success does come, beyond the imagination of Jack’s agents and co-stars–even beyond the hopes of his boyhood friend Buddy Pal, a man who carries with him the dark secretes of Jack’s past.
Buddy stands apart, aloof: he alone truly benefits from Jack’s careening ambition and his artful, charming conniving. Others who depend on Jack may fall by the wayside, but how can the affable star be blamed?
In fact, Jack Pine can be excused anything–until he carries out the final sin, for which there can be no pardon…
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Let us know what you think of it once you’ve read it. I have that same edition sitting on my pile of books-to-eventually-be-read.
I checked this out from the library today. I have been reading a lot of science fiction lately because I got kind of burnt out on crime fiction. (It goes without saying I started reading crime fiction because I got burnt out on science fiction.)
However, I plan to start this.
I’ve finished this. I enjoyed it but I thought the ending could be better. When I started it I had suspected that Buddy Pal would turn out to be a second personality of Jack Pine. (It’s obvious that Pine isn’t a reliable narrator.) After it became clear, I thought Pal had replaced Pine and then lost his sanity. Well, I was wrong.
I’ve flipped through this but haven’t read it; there are literally hundreds of books in my queue, and I have always admitted I prefer Stark to Westlake, but of course Sacred Monster is considered one of Westlake’s best. I really have to get down to reading the Westlakes I haven’t read yet–I have most of them already, either in print or digital, it’s just so hard to fit all the books I want to read into my limited amount of reading time each day.