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The Tutor by Peter Abrahams
When Scott and Linda Gardner hire a tutor for their wayward son, he's quickly embraced as part of the family. He's charming and capable, the answer to their prayers. But he's about to become every family's worst nightmare. As each family member takes him into their confidence they feed his sinister plan. Only eleven-year-ol
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First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Peter Abrahams
116 books419 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Peter Abrahams is an American author of crime fiction for both adults and children.
His book Lights Out (1994) was nominated for an Edgar Award for best novel. Reality Check won the best young adult Edgar Award in 2011. Down the Rabbit Hole, first in the Echo Falls series, won the best children's/young adult Agatha Award in 2005. The Fan was adapted into a film starring Robert De Niro and directed by Tony Scott (1996).
His literary influences are Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, and Ross Macdonald. Stephen King has referred to him as "my favorite American suspense novelist".
Born in Boston, Abrahams lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. He is married and has four children including Rosie Gray. He graduated from Williams College in 1968.
Peter Abrahams is also writing under the pseudonym Spencer Quinn (Chet and Bernie Mysteries).
Peter Abrahams is an American author of crime fiction for both adults and children.
His book Lights Out (1994) was nominated for an Edgar Award for best novel. Reality Check won the best young adult Edgar Award in 2011. Down the Rabbit Hole, first in the Echo Falls series, won the best children's/young adult Agatha Award in 2005. The Fan was adapted into a film starring Robert De Niro and directed by Tony Scott (1996).
His literary influences are Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, and Ross Macdonald. Stephen King has referred to him as "my favorite American suspense novelist".
Born in Boston, Abrahams lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. He is married and has four children including Rosie Gray. He graduated from Williams College in 1968.
Peter Abrahams is also writing under the pseudonym Spencer Quinn (Chet and Bernie Mysteries).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
February 9, 2024
Negligent is to Forsake as Mendacious is to Deceive...
THE TUTOR by Peter Abrahams
No spoilers. 5 stars. I'm in the minority with my rating, but I like a slow-burning noir novel, and this one was dark indeed...
Julian is a high school SAT tutor with an agenda of his own....
... he dreams of writing a living novel which will be peopled by the Gardner family of Robin Road...
.. Julian was hired to tutor their son Brandon on how to pass the SAT exam...
While impressing the entire family, Julian is assessing them as he will be using them in his ambitious novel...
Here are his findings:
Scott, the father, has a fundamental inferiority complex, is basically lazy, and is a gambler with no notion of odds...
Linda, the mother, is an ambitious ladder climber who wants to realize her own thwarted potential...
Adam, first-born, is a superboy who died too soon from leukemia...
Brandon, an average normal kid, is trying to please his parents by passing the SAT exam and getting into an Ivy League college...
Ruby, the 11 year old daughter of the family, is just an annoying and somewhat independent little girl...
Julian viewed Ruby as not especially clever but still...
... he wasn't so sure she couldn't figure him out with her intense interest in her beloved book, THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMS...
Julian's living epic novel was to be nature and art blending in real time; characters, situations, and fates...
... the subject of his novel: middle-class American family at home...
But first...
Julian must solve his own riddle:
Negligent is to forsake as
mendacious is to deceive...
More troubling to Julian is Ruby's answer to his riddle...
Nothing you can't depend on
Will ever depend on you...
Meanwhile...
Julian has good animal-like senses, and they were warning him that his characters were developing their own plots and were allied to work against him...
This is a dark study of an intelligent psychopath's mind and how his sick obsession invades an unsuspecting family's life.
It's a slow-burner to be sure but a great little noir novel.
THE TUTOR by Peter Abrahams
No spoilers. 5 stars. I'm in the minority with my rating, but I like a slow-burning noir novel, and this one was dark indeed...
Julian is a high school SAT tutor with an agenda of his own....
... he dreams of writing a living novel which will be peopled by the Gardner family of Robin Road...
.. Julian was hired to tutor their son Brandon on how to pass the SAT exam...
While impressing the entire family, Julian is assessing them as he will be using them in his ambitious novel...
Here are his findings:
Scott, the father, has a fundamental inferiority complex, is basically lazy, and is a gambler with no notion of odds...
Linda, the mother, is an ambitious ladder climber who wants to realize her own thwarted potential...
Adam, first-born, is a superboy who died too soon from leukemia...
Brandon, an average normal kid, is trying to please his parents by passing the SAT exam and getting into an Ivy League college...
Ruby, the 11 year old daughter of the family, is just an annoying and somewhat independent little girl...
Julian viewed Ruby as not especially clever but still...
... he wasn't so sure she couldn't figure him out with her intense interest in her beloved book, THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMS...
Julian's living epic novel was to be nature and art blending in real time; characters, situations, and fates...
... the subject of his novel: middle-class American family at home...
But first...
Julian must solve his own riddle:
Negligent is to forsake as
mendacious is to deceive...
More troubling to Julian is Ruby's answer to his riddle...
Nothing you can't depend on
Will ever depend on you...
Meanwhile...
Julian has good animal-like senses, and they were warning him that his characters were developing their own plots and were allied to work against him...
This is a dark study of an intelligent psychopath's mind and how his sick obsession invades an unsuspecting family's life.
It's a slow-burner to be sure but a great little noir novel.
January 12, 2020
Peter Abrahams' "The Tutor" gifted me with a lot of "firsts". It had been lying on my shelf for a while after being the first book I pick up from a library and was delightfully the first thriller novel I ever read.
Up till then I had been occupied with a weird variety of genres. From childhood "horror" reads of Goosebumps and Paulo Coelho's mystifying fiction world, I had never set foot on this new spooky territory; and what a territory it was! I will never forget this book and the impact it had on my and my reading preferences. I immediately set out to order anything written by Peter Abrahams and was the happiest person alive when they finally arrived in the mail!
Thriller became my new favourite genre. The book had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, I flipped through pages and pages of this novel during the summer break between high school and college and you wouldn't find me without the book in my hand. I instinctively began reading the book slowly, in order to stretch the time I had with it.
Many many thriller books later, this is still my favourite thriller novel and I have a feeling it always will be. It might not be the best written one, or the one with the best plot. But it was the one that ushered me into one of my favourite genres, and if anyone knows me well enough they'd know how much of a sentimental schmuck I am!
Up till then I had been occupied with a weird variety of genres. From childhood "horror" reads of Goosebumps and Paulo Coelho's mystifying fiction world, I had never set foot on this new spooky territory; and what a territory it was! I will never forget this book and the impact it had on my and my reading preferences. I immediately set out to order anything written by Peter Abrahams and was the happiest person alive when they finally arrived in the mail!
Thriller became my new favourite genre. The book had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, I flipped through pages and pages of this novel during the summer break between high school and college and you wouldn't find me without the book in my hand. I instinctively began reading the book slowly, in order to stretch the time I had with it.
Many many thriller books later, this is still my favourite thriller novel and I have a feeling it always will be. It might not be the best written one, or the one with the best plot. But it was the one that ushered me into one of my favourite genres, and if anyone knows me well enough they'd know how much of a sentimental schmuck I am!
October 28, 2015
A while back (late 1980s/early 1990s) there was a spate of suspense movies I think of as "cuckoo in the nest" stories. The cuckoo, as most people know, is notorious for laying its eggs in the nests of unsuspecting birds, so that its huge, demanding chick crowds out the rightful fledglings and steals all their food and attention. In a similar fashion, these films -- Single White Female, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, The Temp, Pacific Heights, etc. -- feature a hapless person or family who lets a smiling stranger into their midst, only to have them try to take over. Unlike the poor starved nestlings, though, I never really warmed up to the "victims" in these movies. They came across as too smug and self-satisfied, entirely too complacent in their upwardly mobile lives. If anything, they needed the roommate/nanny/temp/tenant from hell to shake them out of their yuppie stupors.
The Tutor is very much a cuckoo-in-the-nest story. An upper middle class family, the Gardners, is in a pickle. Their son, Brandon, is more interested in partying than studying, and scored a mediocre ranking on the SATs. What if (gasp!) he is not accepted to an Ivy League college? The father, Scott, wants to upgrade their lifestyle to the next income bracket through risky deals in the stock market, and the mother, Linda, is struggling to make a client happy with her marketing of their new subdivision. In other words, their metaphorical McMansion just isn't big enough anymore. So they decide to enlist a tutor to help whip Brandon's SAT scores into shape. Enter Julian Sawyer. He's intelligent, well-spoken, and helpful to a fault--also a complete whack job who just wants to toy with them sadistically (it's like his special project).
I ended up enjoying this one a lot, despite the tired premise and the insufferable family, for two reasons: first, this book is hilarious! It's a warped comedy of manners, almost a satire. Second, the character of the youngest daughter, eleven-year-old Ruby, the pain in the butt kid and budding Sherlock Holmes, was terrific. Not only did she provide a lot of the humor, but she was so likable, I didn't even want her insufferable yuppie parents to suffer, just for her sake. So toss those baby birds out of the nest, and bring on the cuckoo; this time it works.
P.S. I just looked over some other reviews and apparently I am the only one who thinks this book is funny. Which probably does not bode well for my mental health....
The Tutor is very much a cuckoo-in-the-nest story. An upper middle class family, the Gardners, is in a pickle. Their son, Brandon, is more interested in partying than studying, and scored a mediocre ranking on the SATs. What if (gasp!) he is not accepted to an Ivy League college? The father, Scott, wants to upgrade their lifestyle to the next income bracket through risky deals in the stock market, and the mother, Linda, is struggling to make a client happy with her marketing of their new subdivision. In other words, their metaphorical McMansion just isn't big enough anymore. So they decide to enlist a tutor to help whip Brandon's SAT scores into shape. Enter Julian Sawyer. He's intelligent, well-spoken, and helpful to a fault--also a complete whack job who just wants to toy with them sadistically (it's like his special project).
I ended up enjoying this one a lot, despite the tired premise and the insufferable family, for two reasons: first, this book is hilarious! It's a warped comedy of manners, almost a satire. Second, the character of the youngest daughter, eleven-year-old Ruby, the pain in the butt kid and budding Sherlock Holmes, was terrific. Not only did she provide a lot of the humor, but she was so likable, I didn't even want her insufferable yuppie parents to suffer, just for her sake. So toss those baby birds out of the nest, and bring on the cuckoo; this time it works.
P.S. I just looked over some other reviews and apparently I am the only one who thinks this book is funny. Which probably does not bode well for my mental health....
January 9, 2017
Very limp domestic thriller, particularly so for one that starts with an erection, literally, first sentence and there it is. Notably clever and able Sherlock obsessed kid (by far the shining star of this production), a bunch of clueless adults and an oddly bland psychopath square off after a simple part time tutoring position gets expanded into something of a live aboard, blurring the boundaries of privacy and reason. Sort of a supermarket thriller. Very readable and quickly so, but doesn't have much to offer.
Further research shows Abrahams to be a YA author of...surprise, surprise....kiddie sleuths obsessed with Sherlock. Which makes this novel, at best, a recycling. Upgraded for adults with things like erections. Limp indeed.
Further research shows Abrahams to be a YA author of...surprise, surprise....kiddie sleuths obsessed with Sherlock. Which makes this novel, at best, a recycling. Upgraded for adults with things like erections. Limp indeed.
December 6, 2017
Onvan : The Tutor - Nevisande : Peter Abrahams - ISBN : 345439414 - ISBN13 : 9780345439413 - Dar 359 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2002
September 29, 2014
I was interested in this book and was thoroughly enjoying it until it ended, and quite abruptly. The development of the ending left much to be desired. I think Abrahams could have easily written another hundred pages and given this book the ending it deserved. Though the reader was given explanation and closure all tied up with a nice, neat little bow, I felt the ending could have been so much better. Would've had a higher rating, but the ending killed it for me:/
August 28, 2014
I loved it. Abrahams has a knack for getting inside each characters' head and even writing in a different style for each one's POV. It's subtle, but it's there. I'm also a big fan with how he shows us the characters through their actions instead of through his descriptions of them.
A great read til the very end.
A great read til the very end.
September 16, 2014
Oh yeah off my massive Game of Thrones series and back in the library like I left something choosing random titles to fit my reading fancy and stumbled upon this one, I cant lie the two word title and the foreshadowing of evil and manipulation was too strong to resist and I picked this one up, but yawn it was not what I expected, have read something like it and better and really didn't care for it like I should (after a five star read books have a lot to live up to in my mind LOL) and this one was just alright...Okay so the premise is a middle class family struggling to be more and be better with two kids (one deceased) dealing with life and its challenges; jobs, school, money and a teenager with poor SAT scores..The parents so desperate to make their kids as successful as the one who passed away and in a futile struggle to keep up with their successful family and friends decide to enlist a tutor for their son and herein the story takes off..So after meeting the family with the flat and boring father desperate to be like his big brother and envied by all, the mother dealing with her need to grow in her career but being stifled by motherhood, the precocious Sherlock Holmes loving young daughter Ruby too smart for her own good and too young to know that and then the rebellious and teenaged angst ridden oldest son Brandon--you meet the mysterious tutor Julian, an older man who is never really fleshed out or explained but shrouded in an air of mystery never really explained with a fixation with strawberry jam and creating a psychological profile of the family with his own evil twists to their crazy storylines just to see how they handle it..he starts living with them basically, tutoring Brandon and maybe Ruby, dogsitting and just getting too damn close for nothing to really happen, it was all very vague and you never really know why for anything...at the fast ending when all could be explained I feel it just gets jumbled and rushed over and all the plot twists and Julian's evil doings get glossed over rather frustratingly..eh..I think this book needs another hundred pages to really make it a read that is understood and appreciated as the premise is there but not the story...Not really recommended as there are better ones out there (see my review of The Mentor by Sebastian Stuart) and umm on to the next one..yay reading!
April 26, 2017
This is a stunning read from Abrahams.
When Scott and Linda Gardner hire Julian Sawyer to tutor their troubled teenage son Brandon, he seems like the answer to a prayer. Capable and brilliant, Julian connects with Brandon in a way neither of his parents can. He also effortlessly helps Linda to salvage a troubled business deal and gives Scott expert advice on his tennis game. Only eleven-year old Ruby—funny, curious, devoted to Sherlock Holmes—has doubts about the stranger in their midst who has so quickly become like a member of the family. But even the observant Ruby is far from understanding Julian’s true designs on the Gardners.
For Julian, the Gardners are like specimens in jars, creatures to be studied— and manipulated. Scott is a gambler with no notion of odds, festering in the shadow of his more successful brother. Linda is ambitious, hungry for the cultured stimulation Julian easily provides. Brandon is risking his future late at night in the town woods. And Ruby—well, she’s just a silly little girl. And in that miscalculation lies the Gardner family’s only possible salvation.
In The Tutor, Peter Abrahams creates a living, breathing portrait of an American family, their town, their secrets, their dreams—and a portrait just as compelling of the menace they welcome into their home. It is his most chilling, suspenseful novel to date.
Abrahams did absolutely wonderfully with this novel. I was completely hooked. The build up is brilliant. You don't even realise the danger until it's too late, and it really got me going. I was in shock, I sat with my mouth in a perfect little 'o' for the majority of this book. This is amazing. This is everything I expect from a psychological crime-thriller, and I cannot wait to reread this and review it properly.
When Scott and Linda Gardner hire Julian Sawyer to tutor their troubled teenage son Brandon, he seems like the answer to a prayer. Capable and brilliant, Julian connects with Brandon in a way neither of his parents can. He also effortlessly helps Linda to salvage a troubled business deal and gives Scott expert advice on his tennis game. Only eleven-year old Ruby—funny, curious, devoted to Sherlock Holmes—has doubts about the stranger in their midst who has so quickly become like a member of the family. But even the observant Ruby is far from understanding Julian’s true designs on the Gardners.
For Julian, the Gardners are like specimens in jars, creatures to be studied— and manipulated. Scott is a gambler with no notion of odds, festering in the shadow of his more successful brother. Linda is ambitious, hungry for the cultured stimulation Julian easily provides. Brandon is risking his future late at night in the town woods. And Ruby—well, she’s just a silly little girl. And in that miscalculation lies the Gardner family’s only possible salvation.
In The Tutor, Peter Abrahams creates a living, breathing portrait of an American family, their town, their secrets, their dreams—and a portrait just as compelling of the menace they welcome into their home. It is his most chilling, suspenseful novel to date.
Abrahams did absolutely wonderfully with this novel. I was completely hooked. The build up is brilliant. You don't even realise the danger until it's too late, and it really got me going. I was in shock, I sat with my mouth in a perfect little 'o' for the majority of this book. This is amazing. This is everything I expect from a psychological crime-thriller, and I cannot wait to reread this and review it properly.
dnf
August 15, 2020At 124 pages, I’m still not all that intrigued with what’s going to happen next. The characters are very well developed, but things are barely happening. Plus, Julian is just deranged and disturbing, and I’m done with spending any more time in his thoughts! While I understand why a writer might want to explore the psyche of a sociopath (who will probably soon be a serial killer), I’ve found that as a reader I dread spending time with them, which means I dread picking up the book. Moving on to the next read!
May 27, 2011
Mom and Dad hire an SAT tutor for their slacker son. Turns out he’s the tutor from hell. Abrahams is one of the best writers around.
May 6, 2012
I don't know why I picked this book up in the first place.
I still remember how the book begins and it does not seem to be the type of genre I was normally interested in. Somehow the book drew me in and it did not take longer than a chapter or two before I was immersed in this novel.
The story was mostly written in perspective of a 11 year-old girl, Ruby. She was such a lovable character and without her narration I would of rated this book about 3 stars. 3 because Peter Abrahams seem to have a wonderful talent for writing, which made my reading experience from just ordinary to extraordinary. The style of writing was not eccentric but there was never a time I felt like I had to 'go through' a chapter.
Despite being mostly narrated by a 11 year-old, the story never becomes childish. In the book Ruby is absolutely in love with the book 'Sherlock Holmes', which just reminded me; Ruby is just the reason I started reading 'Sherlock Holmes'.
I have more to thank Peter Abrahams than just a good read but also in helping me discover my love for 'Sherlock Holmes'.
One of the books that I'm still looking around to purchase.
I still remember how the book begins and it does not seem to be the type of genre I was normally interested in. Somehow the book drew me in and it did not take longer than a chapter or two before I was immersed in this novel.
The story was mostly written in perspective of a 11 year-old girl, Ruby. She was such a lovable character and without her narration I would of rated this book about 3 stars. 3 because Peter Abrahams seem to have a wonderful talent for writing, which made my reading experience from just ordinary to extraordinary. The style of writing was not eccentric but there was never a time I felt like I had to 'go through' a chapter.
Despite being mostly narrated by a 11 year-old, the story never becomes childish. In the book Ruby is absolutely in love with the book 'Sherlock Holmes', which just reminded me; Ruby is just the reason I started reading 'Sherlock Holmes'.
I have more to thank Peter Abrahams than just a good read but also in helping me discover my love for 'Sherlock Holmes'.
One of the books that I'm still looking around to purchase.
June 26, 2014
My first mistake was thinking that since Peter Abrahams, a favorite young adult writer, wrote this book that it must be a young adult novel. It was anything but. It was a very dark story. I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked to and only kept reading it because of who wrote it. And okay, yes, I needed to see what happened to this poor trusting innocent family. And the other thing is that I love stories with smart little girls in it. In this case, the 11 year-old daughter, Ruby, who loves Sherlock Holmes was the only suspicious person of this wonderful man whom her family took into their midst. He carefully cultivated them all as he used them in his psychological experiment. That isn't giving anything away- it's evident to the reader from the beginning.
May 4, 2011
Anymore if a book can keep me looking forward to reading more then it ranks pretty high. This book kept me coming back. I'm not sure about the narrator who made Julian seen extremely unlikely to be believable in the role as new found family friend due to his cryptic and rather short answers to friendly dialogue. But you can buy into the family bringing Julian into the fold, so to speak, then the rest of the plot goes along
pretty well.
pretty well.
October 16, 2020
"He considered this new form he was inventing, the living epic poem, nature and art blending in real time. Given the natures of the characters involved and the developing plot they were in, it was actually more of a novel in poetic form. Character, situation, fate: all these still more or less obscure. But he knew his subject: middle-class American life. He was perfectly poised to observe it. Observe and so much more, to participate, experiment, control, because the living novel would be a flesh-and-blood form, first of a kind, with an unprecedented tension, exciting and evolving, between the characters and their auteur. Only the auteur mattered in the end, of course, and therefore how perfectly bathetic were the Gardners, unquestioning, homely believers in their own mattering."
Late in THE TUTOR, there's a scene between two people: Ruby, an eleven-year-old girl who loves the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes; and Julian, her older brother's live-in tutor. On one level, it's just two people sitting and talking at a breakfast table; on another, it's a high-stakes battle of wits between a psychopathic killer and the one living person who seems capable of seeing through him. The two casually but delicately probe and evade, loading innocent questions with words that are designed to thwart and detect. One wrong move might send Julian leaping at her across the strawberry jam, or Ruby fleeing the room for her bow and arrow. It is an absolute masterpiece of a scene, and highlights Peter Abrahams' particular strengths as an an author: as a visual artist uses white space to subtly give more weight and resonance to their subjects, so Abrahams uses what isn't said between people to reveal things about them that they don't necessarily want revealed, to show one thing happening on one level while something completely different — and usual darker — happens on another level. Conversations between Abrahams characters are never on the nose, never outright exchanges of information; they are highly weaponized encounters used to identify weaknesses and assert strength, to illustrate the battle for control over a person or narrative in the way we often do in real life even if we aren't fully aware of it. The effect of such exquisite conversational pirouettes is a highly pleasurable one, one that teases us, provokes us to keep on turning pages until we feel as invested in the embodiments of evil as we are in te embodiments of good, and even though Abrahams stays within the genre even as he strays outside of established genre form, we know that good will prevail over evil, unless of course, it doesn't, or it comes at a cost too high to bear. Blood will be drawn, psychically or physically, and some will lose more than they can withstand.
All of which is to say that THE TUTOR is a standout example of the special gifts of Peter Abrahams, gifts that never seem to have gotten their full due because he works in a genre that usually rewards allegiance to prose and story tropes, to frothy banter and familiar character types, to elevated pulse points on every page provoked by on-the-nose danger and emotion. Peter Abrahams writes comfortably, but he doesn't write comfort-food crime-fiction. In a way, he bites the conventions in the ass with slyly satiric setups and execution: Julian's need to infiltrate and dominate the Gardner family is less driven by dreary pop-psych motives like childhood anguish than by his own calcified sense of superiority; as such, he aspires to turn his deconstruction of a typical suburban American family into a work of living art, driven by the idea that good art can leap off the page only when it enters, and takes ownership, of the living world. Most artists feel the same but interpret it in the abstract, constrained by societal norms; Julian feels no such constraint. Fueled by his elephantine ego and goaded by the fact that he can barely function in society without his highly developed powers of evasion and inversion, he can justify anything, including murder.
Ruby is a revelation as well. She's cute and innocent in her way, but she's smart, and sharpens her own strong native sense of observation and perception on the whetstone of Sherlock Holmes stories, developing her raw talents into powers of deduction and induction that can cut in their own way every bit as much as the blade that occasionally pops up in the hand of Julian.
Equally well-drawn are the other Gardners: Scott, the dad, blinded by his self-goading need to do and be better than his brother; Linda, whose own professional ambitions have left her a little misplaced as a person; Brandon, the bright teen who can't handle the pressure to academically perform and turns to drugs and misanthropy; and Adam, the long-dead firstborn son whose ghost looms like a cloud over them all. They're all good but flawed people, people we all know, and this ripe for brutal infiltration and evisceration.
In its way, THE TUTOR is a great American novel, using great American ambition as the ultimate weapon against the great (or at least moderately above-average) American people. It's as funny as it is scary. It bites even as it laughs. And above all, it's got glide, that rare ability a few authors have of carrying weighty darkness on cat's feet. Abrahams' sentences never thump; they spin and thrust little stilettos while you're seduced by the beauty of the blur.
Late in THE TUTOR, there's a scene between two people: Ruby, an eleven-year-old girl who loves the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes; and Julian, her older brother's live-in tutor. On one level, it's just two people sitting and talking at a breakfast table; on another, it's a high-stakes battle of wits between a psychopathic killer and the one living person who seems capable of seeing through him. The two casually but delicately probe and evade, loading innocent questions with words that are designed to thwart and detect. One wrong move might send Julian leaping at her across the strawberry jam, or Ruby fleeing the room for her bow and arrow. It is an absolute masterpiece of a scene, and highlights Peter Abrahams' particular strengths as an an author: as a visual artist uses white space to subtly give more weight and resonance to their subjects, so Abrahams uses what isn't said between people to reveal things about them that they don't necessarily want revealed, to show one thing happening on one level while something completely different — and usual darker — happens on another level. Conversations between Abrahams characters are never on the nose, never outright exchanges of information; they are highly weaponized encounters used to identify weaknesses and assert strength, to illustrate the battle for control over a person or narrative in the way we often do in real life even if we aren't fully aware of it. The effect of such exquisite conversational pirouettes is a highly pleasurable one, one that teases us, provokes us to keep on turning pages until we feel as invested in the embodiments of evil as we are in te embodiments of good, and even though Abrahams stays within the genre even as he strays outside of established genre form, we know that good will prevail over evil, unless of course, it doesn't, or it comes at a cost too high to bear. Blood will be drawn, psychically or physically, and some will lose more than they can withstand.
All of which is to say that THE TUTOR is a standout example of the special gifts of Peter Abrahams, gifts that never seem to have gotten their full due because he works in a genre that usually rewards allegiance to prose and story tropes, to frothy banter and familiar character types, to elevated pulse points on every page provoked by on-the-nose danger and emotion. Peter Abrahams writes comfortably, but he doesn't write comfort-food crime-fiction. In a way, he bites the conventions in the ass with slyly satiric setups and execution: Julian's need to infiltrate and dominate the Gardner family is less driven by dreary pop-psych motives like childhood anguish than by his own calcified sense of superiority; as such, he aspires to turn his deconstruction of a typical suburban American family into a work of living art, driven by the idea that good art can leap off the page only when it enters, and takes ownership, of the living world. Most artists feel the same but interpret it in the abstract, constrained by societal norms; Julian feels no such constraint. Fueled by his elephantine ego and goaded by the fact that he can barely function in society without his highly developed powers of evasion and inversion, he can justify anything, including murder.
Ruby is a revelation as well. She's cute and innocent in her way, but she's smart, and sharpens her own strong native sense of observation and perception on the whetstone of Sherlock Holmes stories, developing her raw talents into powers of deduction and induction that can cut in their own way every bit as much as the blade that occasionally pops up in the hand of Julian.
Equally well-drawn are the other Gardners: Scott, the dad, blinded by his self-goading need to do and be better than his brother; Linda, whose own professional ambitions have left her a little misplaced as a person; Brandon, the bright teen who can't handle the pressure to academically perform and turns to drugs and misanthropy; and Adam, the long-dead firstborn son whose ghost looms like a cloud over them all. They're all good but flawed people, people we all know, and this ripe for brutal infiltration and evisceration.
In its way, THE TUTOR is a great American novel, using great American ambition as the ultimate weapon against the great (or at least moderately above-average) American people. It's as funny as it is scary. It bites even as it laughs. And above all, it's got glide, that rare ability a few authors have of carrying weighty darkness on cat's feet. Abrahams' sentences never thump; they spin and thrust little stilettos while you're seduced by the beauty of the blur.
February 21, 2008
If this hadn't been a Peter Abrahams book, I most likely wouldn't have finished it. It took WAY too long to get going. The villain was kind of creepy, but sort of for no reason. The family, except for Ruby, was not very likeable. I almost didn't care this psycho was after them. It really shouldn't even be allowed to call itself a Peter Abrahams book.
February 4, 2019
This book was very fun to read. I really enjoyed the writing style and felt the characters were beautifully captured, so much so that they felt very genuine. I specifically enjoyed Ruby’s character. This is a great choice for anyone who enjoys a good thriller and I look forward to reading more books by this author.
April 11, 2008
Was partly entertaining, highly creepy, somewhat inexplicable, but the little girl! The little girl is the stupidest and the smartest character while also the most boring and the most interesting somehow. Plus she loves Sherlock Holmes so she's awesome.
March 21, 2017
A slow burner that keeps building and doesn't disappoint, although doesn't quite make a slam-dunk.
Very engaging and easy to read, but not simplistic.
Very engaging and easy to read, but not simplistic.
July 25, 2019
I liked this book from the start but the ending was sudden, plus I kept thinking something big was gonna happen but it never. Not one of my favourites.
March 20, 2020
Amazing book! One of the best thrillers I have ever read! Why have I never heard of this one before????
March 21, 2024
These days, I tutor online. When I was teaching in the classroom, I stumbled across certain titles through no other draw than their title.
The English Teacher,
by Lily King--I read it for no reason than it was about an English teacher, and I even used it to make a lesson plan. The Pet--a B-movie-type horror novel that I devoured because I, too, had a pet. The Curfew. The Bad Girl. You get the idea.
I didn't expect The Tutor to be so good. But oh my goodness. How have I never heard of author Peter Abrahams before?
The Gardner family takes in Julian as a tutor for their troubled son Brandon, so as to boost his SAT score. Meanwhile, Scott and Linda, the parents, are navigating middle age, resentment and stilted ambition, and their daughter Ruby, an amateur sleuth and archer, is navigating her own brand of childhood. All of this is fertile ground for Julian to exploit, though Abrahams is ridiculously adept at showing us how disturbing Julian is without turning all his face cards up in describing him.
The story shows us Julian working the family, and simultaneously the family itself. Will they tip off to what danger they're in? Who will put the pieces together? Will they survive the threat they've invited into their house?
The climactic tete a tete at the end seemed a bit thrown together, but maybe that's because I didn't want the suspense to end. It doesn't matter. What a great yarn. What a great piece of suspense writing.
Mr. Abrahams, you've got yourself a fan.
I didn't expect The Tutor to be so good. But oh my goodness. How have I never heard of author Peter Abrahams before?
The Gardner family takes in Julian as a tutor for their troubled son Brandon, so as to boost his SAT score. Meanwhile, Scott and Linda, the parents, are navigating middle age, resentment and stilted ambition, and their daughter Ruby, an amateur sleuth and archer, is navigating her own brand of childhood. All of this is fertile ground for Julian to exploit, though Abrahams is ridiculously adept at showing us how disturbing Julian is without turning all his face cards up in describing him.
The story shows us Julian working the family, and simultaneously the family itself. Will they tip off to what danger they're in? Who will put the pieces together? Will they survive the threat they've invited into their house?
The climactic tete a tete at the end seemed a bit thrown together, but maybe that's because I didn't want the suspense to end. It doesn't matter. What a great yarn. What a great piece of suspense writing.
Mr. Abrahams, you've got yourself a fan.
September 30, 2018
I met the author of this book at an event last spring and forgot I had ordered the book. This was an interesting read and I think I ordered it because I knew it was about a math tutor. Lo and behold, the sister in the book was named Ruby! I enjoyed this mini mystery and suspenseful story about a family and the tutor (Julian Sawyer) that comes to save the troubled son (Brandon). Turns out that the 10 year old sister, Ruby, is the smart one to figure some things out. It's a realistic story how someone can enter a family and is trusted. Passing this book onto my son the math professor and tutor with an amazing, gorgeous, smart daughter Ruby!!! This was my 52nd book read since January 1 and the fifth year I completed the challenge of 52 books in 52 weeks (actually well ahead of my time frame).
June 8, 2019
3.5 stars, almost 4.
This was one of the more suspenseful novels I've read in a while. I'd forgotten how it feels to have the tension slowly build and want to race forward to see how it plays out. Mr. Abrahams does a nice job of bringing the reader along on a creepy trip with the Tutor and wondering where his intentions with the family will lead.
The bad guy's nemesis is a clever 11 year old girl with a Sherlock Holmes turn of mind. I enjoyed following Ruby's character and being inside her mind as she sleuths hers cases. A half star for the rating was lost due to, what felt like, an abrupt closure. After a delicious ride, it wrapped up too quickly in the last four pages. Although it kept me up to finish it!
This was one of the more suspenseful novels I've read in a while. I'd forgotten how it feels to have the tension slowly build and want to race forward to see how it plays out. Mr. Abrahams does a nice job of bringing the reader along on a creepy trip with the Tutor and wondering where his intentions with the family will lead.
The bad guy's nemesis is a clever 11 year old girl with a Sherlock Holmes turn of mind. I enjoyed following Ruby's character and being inside her mind as she sleuths hers cases. A half star for the rating was lost due to, what felt like, an abrupt closure. After a delicious ride, it wrapped up too quickly in the last four pages. Although it kept me up to finish it!
February 18, 2021
A somewhat creepy psychological thriller.
You knew from the outset that there was something wrong with Julian, the tutor hired by the Gardner family to help their son Brandon do better on his SAT's so that he could hopefully get to a good college. It just took a while before you understood what he was really up to, and what was going to happen. Ruby, the precocious and observant 11 year old younger sister is by far the best character in this book. All of the others have serious character flaws.
The ending was way too rushed - it was almost like Abrahams realized he was at his page limit. Despite that it was an interesting read.
You knew from the outset that there was something wrong with Julian, the tutor hired by the Gardner family to help their son Brandon do better on his SAT's so that he could hopefully get to a good college. It just took a while before you understood what he was really up to, and what was going to happen. Ruby, the precocious and observant 11 year old younger sister is by far the best character in this book. All of the others have serious character flaws.
The ending was way too rushed - it was almost like Abrahams realized he was at his page limit. Despite that it was an interesting read.
April 2, 2024
When psychopathic tutor Julian Sawyer earns the complete trust of the dysfunctional Gardner family, the family's problems increase exponentially. Julian charms most of the clan and attempts to ruin their lives for his own amusement. Only 11-year-old Ruby, infatuated with Sherlock Holmes, is suspicious and uses many of Holmes' techniques to ferret out what is happening. Peter Abrahams has written another satisfying, taut, entertaining thriller. He now writes under the pen name of Spencer Quinn, famous for the delightful Chet and Bernie mystery series. This earlier story does not disappoint.
August 12, 2020
Mary Poppins meets Dexter? Harriet the Spy as written by Dean Koontz? Whatever unholy marriage produced this fun, frivolous, unputdownable thriller, I can only hope the union is bountiful, because I would happily read a book with exactly the same mix of light and dark every week. Not every day, mind, because I gotta get a good night's sleep the other 6 nights to make up for the 1 spent staying up too late reading.
January 24, 2023
Kind of stumbled onto this one, I tend to stay out of the mystery section as I am not into cops/robbers stories. This is not that, nor is it the Stephen King fantasy type mystery. This is what I would call a normal mystery story that could happen anywhere on Main Street USA. A cast of characters who are all flawed come together for descent into darkness that none of them saw coming. Would highly recommend.
June 15, 2017
"To the curious incident of the dog biting the psycho in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing but bite the psycho in the night-time."
"That was the curious dog biting incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
Zippy you didn't deserve it
Watson take care of the family
"The dog did nothing but bite the psycho in the night-time."
"That was the curious dog biting incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
Zippy you didn't deserve it
Watson take care of the family
December 10, 2018
I love the young female characters that Abrahams writes. Ruby was such a joy to follow as she acted as Sherlock Holmes, trying to solve the mysteries in her life. I also love the manner in which Abrahams writes. He is excellent with words. His endings are always a bit fast but this one ended pretty solidly imo.
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