Sacrifice

The outwardly ideal relationship between a beautiful, seemingly innocent teenager and her proud father, who will sacrifice anything for her, conceals a terrible reality

From Publishers Weekly

Large wonders are sacrificed to thin effects as Farris anchors this fanciful trek into Mayan lore with precise detail. A composer of terrors (The Fury) and suspense thrillers (All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By), Farris seldom shocks with tidbits of horror but rather enriches his suspense with far-out plums of plot washed in daily life. Greg Walker, who owns an RCA Servicenter in Georgia, never ages. A member of a Mayan cult, he keeps his longevity abloom by rendering up the living heart of a virgin daughter during an eclipse of the full moon every 19 years. Now over 150, but with the body and mind of a 45-year-old, Greg prepares his latest child, 17-year-old Sharissa, for the old gods in Guatemala. Will C.G. Butterbaugh, a local detective, be able to save fellow tennis player Sharissa from a bloody eclipse, especially when her dad can survive a direct gunshot to the forebrain? And who were Greg's earlier wives and sacrificial daughters? A strongly told story degenerates into sadism, though dashes of Mayan history add a civilized touch, while Greg proves a forgettable character, lacking the inner riches of someone perhaps twice the age of John Gielgud. Though Farris writes with an expert hand, he loses much to the demands of the genre. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The reader of this excellent novel initially admires Greg Walker, a good, Christian family man who is accidentally shot in the head but remains miraculously unaffected by the trauma. However, after he returns from the hospital, his unhealthy interest in his daughter Sharissa's purity leads him to murder her boyfriend. Soon after, a crazy lady accuses him of being the husband who, along with her teenage daughter, ran out on her 19 years ago. The plodding but brave detective Butterbaugh, who has a crush on Sharissa, comes up with the wild theory that Greg is immortal and that his immortality depends on the regular sacrifice of a female virgin. He pursues Greg to ancient Mayan temples, trying to save Sharissa. This riveting novel is essential for public libraries.Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Farris (Fiends, 1990, etc.) concocts a thriller whose pitch-perfect middle Americanisms initially give credibility to its lurid plot. Greg Walker, a TV repairman in Sky Valley, Ga., is a strong, handsome Baptist who believes fervently in family values. When he's hit in the skull by a bullet accidentally fired by a neighboring kid, all the small-town gossip predicts him dead within a day; in fact, despite damage to the brain, he makes a complete recovery. Doctors brought in to analyze the ``miracle'' hypothesize that he may possess a variant gene that will allow him to live a long life. Meanwhile, we learn about his daughter, Sharissa, a 17-year-old whose virginity Greg is so anxious to preserve that he attacks her boyfriend. Then an old woman who has seen pictures of Greg in the newspaper arrives in town, claiming that he is her husband and the father of her child; if her claims were true, he'd be in his seventies, not his forties. All these mysteries are eventually solved by a single conceit: Greg is indeed a very old man; he is one of the chosen earthlings who have achieved immortality by observing the protocol of an ancient Mayan ritual. Every 19 years, he becomes another person--but only if he sacrifices a virgin. After this revelation, the action moves to Guatemala, where Greg has brought Sharissa (it doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess why). She gradually finds out what's going on, but the Guatemalan section, bloated with mystical background stories, is far less interesting than the novel's first half. Farris beautifully evokes ho-hum small-town southern life--his situation humor is so real, it's surreal--and Greg Walker is an intriguing character, but when he travels south of the border his story runs out of steam. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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