Doll's Eyes

Eve Tilden Klein, a scion of an upstanding Connecticut family, finds that the clairvoyance she has inherited from her mother is more a curse than a blessing

From Publishers Weekly

This latest from the author of Twins is a nerve-snapping, stomach-churning thriller. Wealthy Eve Klein has the unenviable ability to see the future when she touches people or even something associated with them. Although her unusual gift occasionally comes in handy, it has also driven away her husband, who doesn't want to live in a psychic fishbowl. Hoping for a reconciliation, she follows him to a lakeside bungalow in the Adirondacks where a small boy was tortured decades earlier. Now grown, the one-time victim tracks down women, mutilating and killing them. At first, all Eve can see of him is light brown hair and tassled loafers near a puddle of blood, but as a local cop insists that she use her power, the killer's dead, brown eyes begin to haunt her visions, and it becomes clear he's hunting for her, too. Despite a spate of foolish set-ups that a child of six would know enough to avoid, Wood's page-turner nurtures a creeping dread that blooms into fully realized fears. Toward the end, Eve becomes a horrific Scheherazade, spilling dark, pain-filled secrets the killer's psyche has locked away for good reason. Literary Guild alternate . Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-Having clairvoyant powers is more of a curse than a blessing for Eve Tilden Dodd Klein, daughter of rich Connecticut parents and wife of Sam Klein. Her powers have alienated her from her husband, and, hoping for a reconciliation, she makes a trip to his cabin retreat in the Adirondacks. Upon her arrival, Eve has a vision of a murder so grotesque that she immediately calls the police. Her description is so accurate that she is momentarily considered to be a suspect. Charming lieutenant Dave Latovsky teams up with Eve to unravel the link between multiple related murders. Their intervention alerts the killer, who then stalks Eve as his next and final victim, a fact that she has psychically forseen. Doll's Eyes is not a book to be read while home alone or after dark. Wood tells a tale of horror so riveting that readers will be both repulsed and mesmerized. Any "splatter punk" fan will find a new favorite in this author.Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VACopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A thriller by the author of Twins ( LJ 4/15/77), this novel is the story of a serial killer who only murders women in the woods on the night of a full moon. One evening, Eve Klein, a psychic who has followed her husband to the area to seek a reconciliation, suddenly senses one of the killer's crimes in progress and reports it to the police. She provides the first break in the case for the local authorities. After she warns others of danger, the killer starts stalking Eve. Set in the Adirondacks, the novel sustains a high level of suspense and should be popular with the readers of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.- Marion F. Gallivan, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, Pa.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Wood wrote three occult novels in the 80's (Amy Girl, 1987, etc.), but her current publisher is promoting her as the author of Twins (1977)--a telling comment on a sagging career that may lift a bit with this vivid if formulaic mix of occult and serial-killer chills. This time, Wood's usual Lady Luckless is poor little rich girl Eve Klein, whose millions can't buy her relief from her other inheritance: the clairvoyant powers that have recently frightened off her husband, Sam. Hoping to confront him, Eve drives from her Connecticut estate to Sam's new house in Raven Lake, New York, where she's instantly felled by a vision of a woman mutilated and dying--the handiwork of local sociopath Adam Fuller, M.D., whose eyes (``empty...dead...glassy. Like a doll's eyes'') give away his utter inability to feel for others, the product of a buried childhood trauma: Fuller kills in the barren hope of feeling pity for his victims. Eve's call to the cops snares homicide legend Dave Latovsky, who takes her to see psychiatrist Terrence Bunner, who happens to have Fuller as a patient. When, at a party, Bunner lets on to Fuller that Eve--whom he won't identify--saw the killer in her vision, the mad M.D. tracks a gory path to the psychic, torturing and shooting Bunner, then a local newsman and his wife, to get Eve's name and address. Meanwhile, at Bunner's funeral, Latovsky notes Fuller's Ken-doll eyes and fingers him for the killer but can't nab him before Fuller snatches Eve, hauling her to his childhood home. There, Eve flashes on the child abuse that turned Fuller into a maniac.... A lurid, loose-jointed tale whose frantic action and emotionalism nearly obscure the familiarity (Koontz, King, etc.) of Wood's themes. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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