Kate Pepper Seven Minutes to Noon

Seven Minutes to Noon

Kate Pepper

Signet, May 2005, $6.99, 307 pp.

ISBN: 045121796

Alice Halpern sits in Carroll Park, Brooklyn waiting for her best friend Lauren Barnet to arrive so she can vent about the eviction notice she just received from the new owner of the brownstone she and her husband rent. However, the nine month pregnant Lauren never shows up. Alice, also pregnant, crosses the street to PS 58 to pick up her two children and wait for Lauren to get her son too, but Lauren never arrives at the elementary school.

The police search for the missing woman until they find her rotting corpse in the nearby Gowanus Canal; the baby crudely removed from the womb. Alice is especially stunned and begins to believe someone is stalking her. With her middle class safe world shattered, she feels strongly that someone is sizing her up as a victim when she enters her ninth month.

Being from a similar middle class neighborhoods in the Bronx, this reviewer knows first hand that Kate Pepper has captured the essence of her urban setting. The action takes a back seat to the growing psychological tension building up inside the lead protagonist who initially fears for her friend, turns horrified when her friend is found brutally murdered with the infant gone, and soon becomes frightened for herself and her unborn. As Alice fears for her safety, fans will wonder if she is paranoid or on target. When the plot switches from her increasing fear of what she considered a haven to that of the final confrontation with a twist, the suspense is powerful but loses a skip yet the audience will hold their breath until the last revelation is revealed.

Harriet Klausner