The Mentor by Lee Matthew Goldberg ★★★★★

Published :13th February 2020

Publisher : Thomas Dunne Books

Format : Kindle, Hardback

Genre : Thriller

Synopsis

Kyle Broder has achieved his lifelong dream and is an editor at a major publishing house. When Kyle is contacted by his favourite college professor, William Lansing, Kyle couldn't be happier. Kyle has his mentor over for dinner to catch up and introduce him to his girlfriend, Jamie, and the three have a great time.

When William mentions that he's been writing a novel, Kyle is overjoyed.

He would love to read the opus his mentor has toiled over.

Until the novel turns out to be not only horribly written, but the most depraved story Kyle has read. After Kyle politely rejects the novel, William becomes obsessed, causing trouble between Kyle and Jamie, threatening Kyle's career, and even his life.

As Kyle delves into more of this psychopath's work, it begins to resemble a cold case from his college town, when a girl went missing.

William's work is looking increasingly like a true crime confession. The Mentor is a twisty, nail-biting thriller that explores how the love of words can lead to a deadly obsession with the fate of all those connected and hanging in the balance.

My Review

Ok so firstly I need to thank BlackThorn Book Tours for this publication date blog spot and an ever bigger thanks to Lee Matthew Goldberg for another fantastic, gripping read and my lovely signed hardback copy!

I literally devoured this one in just over a day, not only was it utterly unputdownable it was also completely immersive, twisted and an on the edge of my seat thriller.

Kyle is an editor at Burke & Burkes publicity in New York. Enjoying his new found fame at signing a very promising author Kyle finds himself answering a call from his old college professor William congratulating him and insisting they meet up to celebrate.

The next night Kyle and his girlfriend Jamie host a dinner for William and all is going really well, so much so that William asks Kyle if he will take a look at his own manuscript he has been writing for the past decade, honoured Kyle accepts.

This is the beginning of a very disturbing and dangerous relationship for Kyle, at first William is just over keen by sending plenty of texts to chase how Kyle is doing with his manuscript, but when Kyle actually starts reading he is shocked and disgusted at the depravity of the words coming from his once known pleasant, friendly mentor.

The story, Devils Hopyard is solely centred around a girl who is in a relationship with her professor. The unnamed girl is drugged and taken to a shack where she is tied up, abused regularly, beaten and left accepting any scraps that are given to her to keep her alive. The professors sole gain is to eventually cut out her heart and eat it up so they can be as one in his stomach. The professor in the story is clearly manic and whilst abusing the girl he at the sae time declares his love for her, rapes her tenderly and tells her they will live together forever inside him when he finally eats her bloody heart.

Wanting to drag it out he satisfies himself with her heart tattoo on her butt cheek, he slices it off and fry's it in the pan to eat.

Kyle stops reading and feeling extremely guilty he decides he must tell his friend and mentor that his writing is awful and completely unpublishable.

William does not take Kindly to this and ends up setting out to ruin Kyle in his career, his love life and also his sanity. Always ensuring that Kyle comes off as the unhinged person when the two disagree in public. Ultimately this all starts to have an effect on his career and his home life, nothing is left untouched by Williams revenge and everything round Kyle begins to crumble.

He is encouraged to keep trying and to stick with it, although It is not long before the girls name is revealed and to Kyles horror this story is sounding very much like a crime that happened years ago to an old girlfriend of his. Mia went missing years ago and the girl in the book is called by the same name and also had other similarities.

Kyle sets out trying to prove this but William is crazier and always one step ahead of his once friend.

I loved how this book kept me guessing all the way through, not at any point did I want to stop reading, constantly wanting to know more about what is inside the depraved pages of Devils Hopyard and if Kyle would actually succeed in showing everyone that this is not a work of fiction at all but a dangerous manics own perverted true story of what he once did.

I really like Kyles character, a ladies man but an all round friendly guy with his goal firmly set on his career and moving forward with his girlfriend Jamie.

William on the other hand I did not like at all, even though you had a couple of chapters in his book about what the main character went through as a child, I kind of guessed this was talking about his own childhood, I still could not warm to him. He is a sick and twisted man and I am grateful he is on the page and not a man in real life. I physically recoiled at some of the things this man wrote in his manuscript.

Goldberg is an amazing story teller, pacing his stories out just right so that you never want your eyes to leave the page, keeping you hooked in and wired up to his cleverly twisted words. This is the second book I have read by this author, the first was The Desire Card

( review is up on my blog ) and I loved it just as much as this one.

This is a fantastic thriller with a great cat and mouse game between mentor and protege that builds to a fantastic ending. Lee Matthew Goldberg has fast became one of my favourite authors.

Purchase Links

Waterstones

Amazon

BookDepository

Meet the author

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE DESIRE CARD, THE MENTOR, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar.

The second book in the Desire Card series, PREY NO MORE, is forthcoming in 2020, along with his first Sci-Fi novel ORANGE CITY. His new endeavour will be as the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe Press and Fringe Digital, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box.

His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests.

After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, Cagibi, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.