Thriller
Stumped
(Represented by Dystel and Goderich Literary Management)
A serial killer “makes” perfect women by amputating their legs. A troubled girl walks knowingly into the killer’s arms. An ambitious college president spirals toward madness.
Set in the Berkshires against the backdrop of an abandoned 19th Century mental asylum, STUMPED does what few thrillers do; it delivers a totally original look at the mind gone wrong. This atmospheric, darkly-comic thriller begins when Helen Ivers, still reeling from her sister’s recent suicide, takes a position as the president of Pittock College. The isolated campus seems like a good place to recover, but shortly after she arrives, two severed human legs are found bound to the train tracks.
The local police explain away the gruesome occurrence, but when other bodies – and body parts – start piling up, each with a supposedly innocent explanation, Helen becomes convinced the police chief, and maybe the whole town, is covering for a killer.
She embarks on her own investigation, but she begins to doubt herself as nightmares of her sister’s suicide become waking hallucinations and everyone discounts her fears. The only person who shares her apprehensions is a young professor whose aggressive sexual advances are as frightening and alluring as impending madness – a woman who is either Helen’s only ally or the killer.
STUMPED is both a sexually charged page-turner and a fascinating exploration of the disordered mind. From the victim who suffers from Body Identity Integrity Disorder, a condition that leads her to amputate her own limbs, to the killer’s passion for reshaping women, STUMPED takes the reader on a journey as terrifying as Helen’s final decent into the abandoned mental asylum. This chilling page-turner will keep readers guessing until the very end.
