Editora: SUMA DE LETRAS
“Não importa o que você esteja esperando. Vai ser pior.” Gretchen Lowell
Coração ferido tem uma estória peculiar. Eu já havia lido antes, faz uns dois anos, mais ou menos. Porém, quando minha amiga me deu de Natal, eu não me lembrava de o ter lido. Não sei porque, eu simplesmente, deletei de minha mente e da prateleira da minha estante, já que eu havia trocado, aqui mesmo no Skoob, o exemplar anterior.
Alguma coisa que eu ainda não sei o que foi, me fez passar por cima dessa interessante serial killer, a ponto de trocar o livro Coração ferido, por outro – pena não me lembrar qual foi.
Bem – passou – quem sabe, depois eu descubro – o problema agora era somente um: não consigo começar a ler uma trilogia ou dupla de livros, sem ter todos à minha disposição. Esse negócio de esperar pela continuação, por meses, nunca foi comigo. Recebi esse, Coração ferido, primeiro, de Natal, troquei o segundo e ganhei o terceiro de aniversário.
Pronto. Agora, mãos a obra.
Uma serial killer mulher. Tirando, talvez a Carrie Grethen de Patricia Cornwell, há muito tempo que não lia nada desse tipo. O perfil normal (se é que podemos chamar de normal) é o de homens maduros solitários que sofreram abuso sexual durante a infância – mas, afinal, porque não?
with compliments from: Gretchen Lowell
O livro começa dois anos após o detetive Archie Sheridan, que comandava as investigações dos crimes chamados de “Beleza Mortal”, que assolaram Portland, por 10 anos, ter sido, ele próprio, capturado pela criminosa, Gretchen Lowell, uma enfermeira que se fez passar por psiquiatra, oferecendo seus serviços profissionais à polícia – torturado, as costelas quebradas a martelo, forçado a beber “diabo verde”, peito desenhado a faca com a assinatura de um coração, viciado em anfetaminas e analgésicos, baço retirado cirurgicamente, paralisado, morto e ressuscitado através de transfusão de sangue e administração de fluidos intravenosos – tudo no espaço de 10 dias.”
Ela está presa, agora, em prisão perpétua, mas outro criminoso retraça seus passos – e somente Gretchen pode levar Sheridan a elucidar esses novos crimes. Numa simbiose doentia, Archie/Gretchen bailam uma dança macabra que está apenas começando, neste primeiro volume da trilogia.
A cada visita que Archie lhe faz, na prisão, ela revela o paradeiro de um dos corpos assassinados e ainda por serem descobertos. Há muitos assassinatos ainda por revelar (ele foi o de número 200). Ele só tem que procurar onde ela indica. Para tanto, Archie conta com a participação entusiasmada e ajuda apaixonada da jovem jornalista punk, de cabelos cor de rosa, Susan Ward, ela também, uma das novas vítimas.
Não dá para fazer resenha desse livro sem ser spoiler, portanto, deixo algumas frases de Gretchen, soltas, retiradas do texto: “Você sabe o que vem depois, não sabe?”
“O que você quer fazer hoje? Estou aberta a sugestões, é claro.”
“Quero que você pense no que vamos mandar para eles. Vou deixar você escolher.”
“Posso retalhar você e mandá-lo pedacinho por pedacinho, para seus filhos.”
“Abri um buraco na parede abdominal e puxei o intestino delgado aos poucos com uma agulha de crochê.”
“O que mais me impressiona é o fato de as pessoas acordarem, irem para o trabalho, voltarem para casa e nunca matarem ninguém.”
“Não sou uma pessoa violenta.”
Segue uma entrevista do site Amazon.com, com a escritora, sobre Coração Ferido:
Amazon.com: Gretchen Lowell haunts every page of Heartsick. Even when she actually appears in the jail scenes with Sheridan, she reveals nothing, and yet it’s obvious she’s anything but one-dimensional. What is her story?
Chelsea Cain: I purposely didn’t reveal Gretchen’s past, beyond a few unreliable hints. I thought there was a really interesting tension in not knowing what had driven this woman to embrace violence so enthusiastically. The less we know about killers’ motives, the scarier they are. Maybe that’s why people spend so much time watching 24-hour news channels that cover the latest horrible domestic murder. We want to understand why people kill. Because if we can peg it on something, we can tell ourselves that they are different than us, that we aren’t capable of that kind of brutality. Plus this is the launch of a series and I thought it would be fun for readers to get to learn more about Gretchen as the series continues.
Amazon.com: As a first-time thriller author, you’ve got to be elated to see early reviews evoke the legendary Hannibal Lecter. Did you anticipate readers to make that connection, or are there other serial series (on paper or screen) that inspired the story of Gretchen and Sheridan?
Chelsea Cain: I thought that the connection to Lecter was inevitable since Heartsick features a detective who visits a jailed serial killer. But I wasn’t consciously inspired by Silence of the Lambs (or Red Dragon, which is the Harris book it more accurately echoes). I grew up in the Pacific Northwest when the Green River Killer was at large, and I was fascinated by the relationship between a cop who’d spent his career hunting a killer (as many of the cops on the Green River Task Force did) and the killer he ends up catching. I’d seen an episode of Larry King that featured two of the Green River Task Force cops and they had footage of one of the cops with Gary Ridgway (the Green River Killer) in jail and they were chatting like old friends. They were both trying to manipulate one another. The cop wanted Ridgway to tell him where more bodies were. Ridgway is a psychopath and wanted to feel in control. But on the surface, they seemed like buddies having a drink together at a bar. It was kind of disturbing. I wanted to explore that. Making the killer a woman was a way to make the relationship even more intense. Making her a very attractive woman upped the ante considerably.
Amazon.com: Reading Heartsick I was actually reminded of some of my favorite books by Stephen King. Like him, you have an uncanny ability to make your geographical setting feel like a character all its own. Do you think the story could have happened in any other place than Portland?
Chelsea Cain: Heartsick Hawaii would definitely have been a different book. (Archie Sheridan would have been a surfer. Susan would have worked at a gift shop. And Gretchen would have been a deranged hula girl.) I live in Portland, so obviously that played into my decision to set the book here. All I had to do was look out the window. Which makes research a lot easier. But I also think that the Pacific Northwest makes a great setting for a thriller, and it’s not a setting that’s usually explored. Portland is so beautiful. But it’s also sort of eerie. The evergreens, the coast, the mountains–the scale is so huge, and the scenery is so magnificent. But every year hikers get lost and die, kids are killed by sneaker waves on the beach, and mountain climbers get crushed by avalanches. Beauty kills. Plus it has always seemed like the Northwest is teeming with serial killers. I blame the cloud cover. And the coffee.
Amazon.com: In a lot of ways, Heartsick is more about the killer than the killings, and it’s hard not to suspect that Gretchen killed only to get to Sheridan. That begs the question: is the chase always better than the catch? As a writer, is it more exciting for you to imagine the pursuit–with its tantalizing push-and-pull–than the endgame?
Chelsea Cain: The most interesting aspect of the book to me is the relationship between Archie and Gretchen. Really, I wrote the whole book as an excuse to explore that. The endgame is satisfying because it’s fun to see all the threads come together, but it’s the relationship that keeps coming back to the computer day after day.
Amazon.com: Your characters–Susan Ward in particular–are raw, tautly wired, imperfect but still have this irresistible tenderness. It’s their motives and experiences that really drive the story and ultimately elevate it way beyond what you might expect going into a serial killer tale. How did you resist falling into something more formulaic? Did you know what shape Susan and the others would take going in?
Cain: I knew I wanted flawed protagonists. I’m a sucker for a Byronic hero. Thrillers often feature such square-jawed hero types, and I wanted a story about people just barely hanging on. The psychological component is really interesting to me, and I liked that Susan’s neuroses are, in their own ways, clues. In many ways, I embraced formula. I love formula–there’s a reason it works. And I decided early on that I wasn’t going to avoid clichés for the sake of avoiding them. Some clichés are great. My goal was not to write a literary thriller, but to take all the stuff I loved from other books and TV shows and throw them all together and then try to put my own spin on it. Heartsick is a pulpy page-turner with, I hope, a little extra effort put into the writing and the characters. Basically, I just wrote the thriller that I wanted to read.
Conheça Gretchen Lowell:
Detalhe: a foto da escritora, na orelha do livro, me faz pensar… A escritora Chelsea Cain é estranha… (começou a se interessar por temas mórbidos ainda criança, quando criou um cemitério de animais no quintal da casa)… Mas, não o somos, todos, um pouco?
Chelsea Cain
Chelsea Snow Cain nasceu em 1972 e viveu os primeiros anos de vida numa comunidade hippie no Iowa, passando a juventude em Bellingham (Washington), nos EUA. Atualmente, vive em Portland, no estado de Oregon, com a sua família. Cain foi nomeada uma das quatro autoras sensação do Outono de 2007 pela Entertainment Weekly. Coração Ferido foi considerado Amazon’s Mystery/Thriller of the Year em 2007 e recebeu a distinção New York Times Book Review – editor’s choice.
Vita – 1 de abril de 2010 http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/note.php?note_id=105371789502299
Lili Machado
House of Thrillers - Hot! 