Hide Your Eyes

By Alison Gaylin

     Hide Your Eyes is journalist Alison Gaylin's debut thriller novel featuring the feisty but petite protagonist, Samantha Leiffer. Samantha is a Stanford graduate, but instead of climbing a corporate ladder or holding an esteemed professional position such as doctor or lawyer, she divides her time working in a box-office selling theater tickets and teaching preschool part-time. Her best friend is Yale, her gay coworker at the box-office. Samantha is single after going through a breakup with a heartthrob and up-and-coming actor. She has no relationship with her father and her mother is a self-centered, bizarre woman who found fame in writing self-help books years ago.

     Samantha lives in New York and her life changes one day when she sees a couple mysteriously dump a cooler in the Hudson River. She is curious as to what is in that cooler and she does not have a good feeling about it. Unfortunately, the couple spots her and they are not happy that she is spying on them. When the cooler turns out to have contents that the couple is highly motivated to keep secret, Sam and her friends are subject to a series of attacks. Sam relies on the help of a policeman named John Krull and a romantic interest flickers between the two.

     Hide Your Eyes has a pleasant blend of humor, thriller elements and mystery set in the backdrop of Samantha's interesting life in Manhattan, where something is always going on. Mystery and thriller fans will enjoy Hide Your Eyes and Samantha is an independent, feisty heroine whose character is worthy of a mystery series. I look forward to reading more by this author.