HUSH
Author's Comments:
HUSH came to me in a feverish nightmare. I awoke in a sweat and recorded the terrors in my dream book, then realized that a story hovered behind the sole, startling image of the dream. Despite the fever, I spent the next three and a half hours writing a twenty-two page short story. Then I collapsed and slept for the rest of the day.
Eventually, I polished that first draft and sent it to my agent. He discouraged me from selling it as a short story, saying that the idea was so good that someone would steal it and turn it into a novel. “You should do it,” he said.
It was the best advice he ever gave me.
Praise for Mark Nykanen’s HUSH:
“Emmy and Edgar-winning journalist Nykanen uncovers his characters’
psyches with wit, complexity, and originality...Nykanen’s attractively unpredictable characters will keep a stubborn hold on readers’ attention.”
--Publishers Weekly
“A well-crafted and sophisticated psychological thriller that captures in frightening detail the fevered inner life of a psychopath. Elegant and darkly powerful.”
--Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter and Outrage.
“A taut wire of a thriller.”
--Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“A striking debut...Nykanen’s writing style, skill at characterization and sense of irony make HUSH [a] first-rate story.”
--Portland Oregonian
“The pace is pulsing and the terror of a woman fighting for her life
is so real that it is impossible to put this book down...This well-written
novel is highly recommended.”
--Library Journal
“Chet Boyce is a terrific creation, a dangerously insane fellow who...
is drawn with such precision that he seems not only real but chillingly
familiar.”
--Booklist
“I found myself unable to put the book down...Several times, I even
skimmed paragraphs, anxious over what was going to happen next...
Like a white-knuckled modern-day Wait Until Dark, it takes its time
getting to its set piece, but once it gets there, it takes no prisoners.”
--Bentley Little, Bram Stoker award-winning author.
“Nykanen’s first novel, HUSH, is a blood-drenched, compelling
variation on Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs.”
--New Times L.A.
“HUSH is a unique, tremendous characterization study that dives into
the guts of a psychopath and the fearful relationships he causes with
the people he directly and indirectly affects.”
--Harriet Klausner for BookBrowser
“[Chet Boyce] makes Hannibal Lector seems like a nice guy with an
eating disorder.”
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“HUSH is profound and ingenious and still a thriller that would keep
Stephen King up nights.”
--King Features
“Meet Boyce, the most despicable (and most realistic) villain to
appear in a thriller in many years....[HUSH] is a full-bore thriller that
packs a punch....It is bold, gusty, chillingly realistic and downright
unsettling...Nykanen has more than talent--he has the style and the
ability to grab the reader by the throat.”
--The Salem Statesman Journal
“Unnerving enough to make readers keep checking over their
shoulders--with all the lights in the house on.”
--Tucson Citizen
“HUSH is an impressively grisly, haunting thriller.”
--New Times Phoenix
“HUSH...compresses a lifetime of experience with the criminal psyche
into some 300 white-knuckled pages. It’s a well-crafted psychological
thriller that sets your teeth on edge and practically stops our breathing
as it follows a serial killer/child abuser along a twisted path. There are
not flights of magical realism here, no Stephen King fantasy; this is
pure, realistic, well-written horror.”
--Eugene Register-Guard
