The Flower Man

by Donna Anders

Part-time actress and full-time mother Britt Hinson thought that most of her life's drama was confined to the stage. Then a threatening presence entered her world, a mysterious stranger that no one but her pretty nine-year-old, Katie, had seen. Katie calls him the Flower Man, and Britt and her husband, Mark, don't know whether to believe the child's bizarre tales of the notes and flowers he's left her-- lilies, forget-me-nots, a black rose. But Britt's fears intensify when, with his threatening phone calls and aggressive prowling of their home, the Flower Man draws her into a fight for her daughter's life. The Hinsons become a family under siege. And Britt knows a mother's love won't be enough to protect Katie from harm.....

With gripping realism, THE FLOWER MAN pits a parent's love, a child's honesty, and a family's security against the desperate acts of a relentless stalker.

Genres: Mystery

305 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

Donna Anders was in her early twenties when she made her first sale, a poem she sold to a children's magazine for $1.00. From those early years of writing juvenile poems and stories, to historical novels that balanced her life through some hard times, to suspense thrillers when she wrote about terror from her own experiences, Donna became a writer for life.

Reviews

[Damon Suede · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anders serves up a botched mess about as suspenseful as a pedicure. In a way the most disappointing thing about this book is that child stalking is an extremely timely, inherently terrifying topic. It's a shame to see it mishandled so completely. Ms. Anders little-girl-victim is nothing more than a hair color (blonde, natch) and a series of whining complaints. And the villain is not a character, but a hook on which to hang incidents. Anders objectifies the girl more than the novel's stalker character does. This isn't a drugstore novel, this is landfill waiting to happen.

Having had the misfortune to read not one, but TWO examples of Donna Anders fictive attempts, I'm going to offer a spoiler for everything that might dribble from her pen in the future: hamhanded, plodding, bland, correspondence-school fiction.

In any of her books you'll get whining, lobotomized, passive women beset by the wicked world and capable of only the most rudimentary action without a "big strong man" to help. All of these hand-wringing so-called heroines come equipped with sensitive, bourgeois husbands and irritating tykes (with grade-z sitcom dialogue) and a slick pitchable problem that will get solved in the most deliberate, numbing manner conceivable. Even allowing for the inherent cliches of genre fiction, to call these characters two-dimensional seems unintentional geometric praise. I will add that Anders is the kind of author who uses contemporary slang incorrectly, constantly reminding you that she is relentlessly UN-hip. The plot progresses with dogged singlemindedness, without texture or inventiveness. The heroine will end up pretending pluckiness, but that's only a ruse to fill pages until the men show up to save the day. You'll stumble over red herrings that stink on ice and plot twists that loom 75 pages before they happen. And you'll find that the entire book reads like the BLURB on the back of a book, all cliche and hype without any actual writing. You finish feeling as though you'd eaten 2 pounds of gum for dinner. Skip this. It isn't worth your twenty minutes.

If you want to read a terrifying novel about pedophilia pick up The End Of Alice.

[RockyMountain Swede · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this book ~ at all.

The Flower Man is about a little girl, and a stalker. The Flower Man sees the little girl & he decides she is perfect for his purpose. I believe the stalker is a pedophile if I remember correctly. The book is frustrating because this Flower Man is stalking this child, getting closer and closer and closer, & the parents I swear are ding bats to even let this guy get that close, and the police, God bless them, but in this book they are so inept ~ unable to protect this child & catch this Flower man.
I think the author had a story to tell, a point to make, but the whole story is frustrating because ~ good grief just protect that child!! Get her away to a safe place ! I think they did that though and the Flower Man followed them to the safe place.

I read the whole thing. I persevered to the end, but it was a struggle. If you can stand it ~ read it. But I gave this thing away, or it went into the dumpster, not the authors best book.,

[Kirsteen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sometimes those free paperbacks from the library don't deserve to go back into circulation.