From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis
Date: 8/18/99
Time: 1:57:01 PM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10
That's were I have trouble putting it all together. I thought that Samson wrote the book and left it for Mark Asprey (or at least in his apartment). Mark takes the manuscript and puts his name on it but keeps Sam as the narrator. But toward the end there are some passages that have an undetermined speaker. This could be Asprey clueing in on the plot twist toward the end. Shouldn't Sam have known all along he was the killer and it was just Mark who was fooled. Now that letter that Young leaves for Mark asking if he was set up? That throws a wrench into my (above) thinking. Unless he was just set-up in the sense that once he showed up, Mark was confident that the rest would take care of itself.
Also, the *Crossbone Waters* (?) book by Mark that Sam read; Is there some parallel connection? In real life Mark never boffed Cornelius yet claimed he had. In the book he eventually beds her. So was the whole MA thing in Nicola's diary a fake-out?
Anyway, I found little wrong with the book. And it certainly reinforced my opinion that an Amis novel must be read twice.