OR
SHE DIES
Gregg Hurwitz
An unmarked DVD falls
from the newspaper one morning, landing in Patrick Davis's lap. It holds footage,
shot at the window, of him inside his house. Someone is spying on him. And they
want him to know.
Patrick's been going through a rough patch
ever since his screenwriting career flamed out before it really started, after
a bad altercation on his first set. Disillusioned, he's gone back to teaching,
this time as an adjunct professor in the film department of a local college. He
and Ariana, his wife and college sweetheart, are having difficulties for the first
time, trying to pick up the wreckage of a recent affair.
Is
the DVD merely a mean-spirited prank? Or a veiled threat? Another disc mysteriously
arrives, this footage shot from the neighbor's roof. It shows Patrick investigating
his yard after watching the first DVD. His anger and paranoia grow. When he finds
a third disc, hidden inside his own camcorder on his own roof (in anticipation
of his searching up there), his concern escalates into terror. Sitting on his
couch, he watches the footage. It shows a hand turning the knob of Patrick's back
door, breaking into his house. Whoever is holding the camera creeps to the living
room couch. And stands over Patrick's sleeping body.
Patrick
looks around the house, finding a blank disc. He puts it in his player but nothing
happens. After punching buttons on his remote, an image appears. Of Patrick, watching
the TV. In real time. Someone has embedded a hidden camera in the cabinet. And
attached to it, at the end of the wire, is a prepaid cell phone.
The
cell phone rings. The speaker, in an altered voice, directs him to a blueprint
folded in the couch. It shows that the house is full of hidden cameras and listening
devices. Patrick is to remove them all. Check a mysterious email account in the
morning. And await further instructions. He is warned not to talk to the cops.
Their
terror growing, Patrick and Ariana tear their house apart, removing the devices,
confronting the horror of this invasion. A friend in security identifies the surveillance
technology as top-shelf-something the CIA or foreign spies might use. Why the
hell would someone at that level be concerned with an adjunct screenwriting professor?
After
a sleepless night, Patrick checks out the email. It links to a website which shows
pictures of a rundown apartment in a bad part of town. It instructs Patrick to
go alone. And tells him to bring another mysterious DVD, which holds seemingly
innocuous footage of an empty basement. The website then disappears.
Tentative
and scared, Patrick goes to that apartment. And a man flies out, furious, believing
Patrick has been sending him DVDs. Once the mix-up is untangled, Patrick shows
him the DVD he was told to deliver. The man views the footage and breaks down
sobbing. It proves to hold the man's redemption, freeing him from the emotional
ghosts that have been holding him hostage. Patrick is alarmed to receive the man's
gratitude, and he walks away feeling stunned, alive, and-for the first time in
a long time-significant.
The emails keep coming. The next one
makes clear that a woman's life is at stake, that she will die if Patrick doesn't
follow instructions. And Patrick is able to intervene to save her life-though
it turns out she wasn't at risk from whoever is sending the DVDs, but from an
unrelated matter that the DVDs served to alert Patrick to. As he vacillates between
fury and relief, terror and obsession, the cops get drawn back into the picture,
and he and Ariana come to loggerheads over how to approach this bizarre and menacing
game. He is being asked to play God, and put in increasingly compromising positions.
He decides the only way to win is not to play.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Gregg Hurwitz is the critically acclaimed author
of 'I See You' (2007), 'We Know' (2008) and his new thriller 'Or She Dies'. 'I
See You' was an instant international bestseller that made numerous bestseller
lists, was shortlisted for International Thriller Writer's Best Novel and nominated
for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller. Gregg has written screenplays
for Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Paramount Studios, MGM, and ESPN, developed TV series
for Warner Bros. and Lakeshore, written Wolverine, Punisher, and Foolkiller for
Marvel, and published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare. He has taught
fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA, and
for Harvard in the United States and around the world. In the course of researching
his thrillers, he has sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swam with
sharks in the Galápagos, and gone undercover into mindcontrol cults. He
now lives in L.A. where he continues to play soccer, frequently injuring himself.
While completing a BA from Harvard and a master's from Trinity College, Oxford
in Shakespearean tragedy he wrote his first novel. He was the undergraduate scholar-athlete
of the year at Harvard for his pole-vaulting exploits, and played college soccer
in England, where he was a Knox fellow. He now lives in L.A. where he continues
to play soccer, frequently injuring himself.
'Or
She Dies' is available now (RRP $32.99).
