Crosscut by Meg Gardiner was a Stephen King recommendation—actually it was a rather confusing Stephen King recommendation—at least it confused me. My memory is that he first read Meg Gardiner's work flying over to England where, I'm sure he said, she had quite a following. I'm pretty sure he also said she was exclisovely published in England, but I had no trouble finding her available online. I mention all this because I figured she was a British writer. Imagine my surprise when Crosscut turned out to be set in California. I checked her bio. Turns out she is American—at least raised here—but she and her family now live Cobham, Surrey. Maybe we're having a blossoming of ex-patriot horror writers.
None of which has anything to do with Crosscut, which did turn out to be pretty much of a page turner. Ten or so years prior to the book' action, a government program went really wrong, and an explosion, which was to set matters right, exposed some youngsters on a field trip to an experimental drug. Now it's class reunion time, and the government roosters have come home to roost—a roosting disturbed by an out-of-control serial killer. The plot is action-packed and suspenseful. Occasionally I had trouble keeping track of who was who, but Gardiner is a nice writer in that she reminds the reader of characters' actions as well as names. Never once did I have that lost-in-a-Russian-novel, everyone-has-at-least-three-names feeling.
The book is fairly grizzly—my thinking is that's why it wound up on Stephen King's plate—but only occasionally stomach-turning. My stomach suffered more during my first reading of 'Salem's Lot.
Will I give Gardiner another try? King recommended starting with China Lake, the first of a series in which Crosscut is, I believe, number four. Right now I don't know. The unread shelf is pretty full, and nothing in Crosscut made me ready to order all she has written. C+, B- at best.
