Super Thriller: On The Run

* Photo credit to The Closet *

I hope this thriller is more thrilling than the last. I find it a little sad that I’m dismayed by how thick the book is—a whopping 213 pages! Is it really necessary to stretch out an SVH book?

Liz and Jess are still working as interns in the newsroom of The Sweet Valley News more than 20 books later. Why would Jess work there? Can’t she find something else, like working at Forever 21? Liz, of course, is still creaming herself over the job and takes it so seriously, and is all about this case with a dude named Frank DeLucca, who’s “reported to be one of the most notorious underworld crime figures.” And he’s right here in Sweet Valley, and Ned Wakefield is prosecuting him! What’re the chances?

The twins are also interning with a redhead named Darcy Kayman, who hits it off with Jess but shuns Liz, which I don’t blame her for considering Liz is such a NERD: “The editors are really taking a chance on us. We ought to consider ourselves lucky, to learn all we can about working on a newspaper.” I feel lucky when I don’t have to have a self-righteous, sixteen-year-old twit in my ear, preaching to me on what I should be lucky about. Darcy does what she can to make Liz look bad at work, but this little plot gets abandoned halfway through the book so it’s so pointless.

But back to DeLucca. William Ryan, the doctor of the murder victim, testifies against the crime lord and winds up going into the witness protection program when his testimony puts DeLucca away. Right about this time, Liz meets Eric, the skittish (albeit oh-so-sexy) cashier/poet in the coffee shop downstairs in the News building. Liz offers to show him around, and decides to keep their friendship a secret because “she couldn’t see the point of telling [anyone] about it”; “if she and Eric were going to become friends, no one had to know about it but the two of them.” Mmm hmm. Right. Because secret, absolutely 100 percent platonic friendships are always so innocent. This is Liz’s fucked up rationale in trying to explain why she wants some guy who isn’t her boyfriend Jeffrey French, who’s still away for the whole summer. The first fucking place she takes Eric when she shows him around is make-out central Miller’s Point. Argh. Have I ever told you that I hate Liz??

Anyway, she reads his emo-riffic poetry and cries because it’s so sad and hopeless. No, it’s just bad, okay, Liz? Just shut up. But he starts writing love poetry and Darcy tells everyone that it’s for her, making Liz want to cry because she feels so betrayed (until she finds out it actually is for her). She even has the audacity to call him out on it: “If I’d known you write poems for every single girl you ever meet—” YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND, IDIOT! I’m seriously getting too invested.

Darcy, who is fresh from Ohio just like Eric, calls her friend in Cleveland to see if she has the scoop on the guy and learns that some teenage guy murdered some girl. And it just so happens that Eric fits the description of the killer, who struck just four days before Eric appeared in their lives. Meanwhile, some guys in suits are following Liz and Eric around, making Eric sweat bullets. The Wakefields have Eric and his father Mr. Hankman over for dinner and the neighbor Mr. Beckwith won’t shut the eff up about how he swears he knows Mr. Hankman from some place. Let it go, man! And some other suspicious shit happens, like the FBI asking Liz questions about Eric.

Then a kid starts choking to death in the coffee shop, and Mr. Hankman springs up out of nowhere and saves the kid with a tracheotomy. Then Mr. Beckwith randomly freaking shows up (I’m envisioning him popping up out of a flower pot, with the plant and a clump of dirt on his head) and is like, “Say, I know you! You’re that guy who went into the witness protection program!” Mr. Beckwith is such a fucker. Who does that?

So it turns out that Eric—nee Michael—didn’t knife some Cleveland debutante after all. But now he and his father—Dr. Ryan—have to leave town again. But before they can do so, DeLucca’s men arrive with their guns and things are looking pretty grim. Instead of just shooting everyone right then and there, DeLucca’s men decide to pull a Dr. Evil and just hang out for a bit, lording their triumph over their victims. This gives Liz time to activate the Good Neighbor system, a burglar alarm that’s hooked up to other houses in the neighborhood. So the neighbors run over (likely wielding pitchforks and torches) and actually tackle the bad guys and wrestle away their guns. And then the cops show up, after the action, just as usual. Then Eric/Michael disappears forever, leaving Liz with only his book of crappy poetry.

Other Notes:

• Alice Wakefield titters over having not one but two tacos at dinner, and her beloved son Steven says, “Mom, you can’t weigh an ounce more than the twins do. You could pass for a model!” This seriously makes my butt cringe. Who the flip says creepy stuff like that? Oh, yeah, other Wakefields.
• Okay, wait a freaking minute. This book references the death of Adam Maitland’s fiancee Laurie Forbes. Wasn’t it Laurie Hamilton? Seriously—how is that so hard to screw up?

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