Meeting Evil tells an adrenaline-pumped, genuinely frightening tale of malevolence that swerves swiftly and irrevocably to a catastrophic climax.
John Felton meets evil late one Monday morning when the doorbell rings. Standing on the front porch is a stranger. He wears expensive running shoes and a baseball cap and calls himself Richie. He tells John his car has stalled and asks for help. An altercation at the gas station leads to a shocking crime as violence begets violence. At the end of this harrowing day, John returns home to find Richie ensconced in his living room, chatting up his wife. The evil has somehow seeped into his life. Thus begins the transformation of an unremarkable husband and father of two into a desperate man willing to go to any length to protect his family from the darkness that threatens them.
This is an extraordinary masterpiece and a chilling portrait of mounting menace played out against an everyday world of domestic routine, personified in a protagonist of basic decency grappling with both the immediate and existential meaning of true evil.
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“A seemingly random act of kindness plunges stressed-out real estate agent John Felton into the twisted world of a recently released psychopath. In the tradition of the best movies of Hitchcock, Berger forces his ‘everyman’ into an impossible moral situation and ratchets up the anxiety to an unbearable level. Narrator Bronson Pinchot masterfully aids and abets Berger’s ever-tightening noose of tension by adding a creepy sycophantic tone to the madman’s voice…Pinchot powers up the narrative in the second half, changing tempo and tone as the story moves to its chilling ending.”
— AudioFile
“A brilliant and troubling book…Thomas Berger is the laureate of the ludicrous tragedy.”
— Chicago Tribune“A clever, stylishly written black comedy.”
— San Francisco Chronicle“Berger couches his frightening, paranoic plot with moral and philosophical underpinnings in sardonic, impeccable ‘fluid prose.’”
— Publishers Weekly“This is a precisely rendered, excruciatingly suspenseful tale of psychological duality.”
— Library Journal“Exhilarating, disturbing.”
— Kirkus Reviews" I'm excited to read something else by the author, but I just couldn't commit 100% to Meeting Evil. It's like the movie Very Bad Things, except not quite as believable. Maybe I needed to read it differently, but I didn't buy all the motivations. Even still, it was entertaining and a fast read. "
— Greg, 8/12/2011" Stupid, poorly written, not good Period "
— Valerie, 3/12/2011" This book was awful. The premise was beyond ridiculous and the writing was terrible. I read it because I heard it was made into a Sam Jackson movie and I'm a fan. Sam should've passed on this stinker. "
— Michele, 2/7/2011" Berger's story of an ordinary man pulled into a series of criminal misadventures by a rogue he tries to help is generally involving and entertaining. It's nothing extraordinary — it's no "Little Big Man," to be sure — but I was not disappointed. "
— Tim, 6/8/2010" I'm excited to read something else by the author, but I just couldn't commit 100% to Meeting Evil. It's like the movie Very Bad Things, except not quite as believable. Maybe I needed to read it differently, but I didn't buy all the motivations. Even still, it was entertaining and a fast read. "
— Greg, 7/10/2008Thomas Berger (1924–2014) wrote more than twenty novels in his lifetime, including Regiment of Women, Neighbors, and The Feud, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His novel Little Big Man is known throughout the world.
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.