Well this was an unintentionally seasonable read! (Not because I've been kidnapped, but because today is November 12th).

Reading "The Collector" was a fascinating experience. Where to begin? I could start with the Miranda, who has all the insufferable zeal and unknowing naivety of the first-year art student. The victim of Ferdinand Clegg, the titular "Collector", you quickly see that if he had never kidnapped her, she would nevertheless have been collected in another manner by another man (no spoilers!).

Clegg is carefully written, I believe, to estrange him from the reader. His voice is monotone, the use of punctuation restrained. We are fascinated by him, but we look down on him like an exhibit under glass. His struggles against himself elicited no more angst than one might feel on seeing a specimen struggle in the killing-jar. The observer remains detatched, but--invested.

I found it interesting that both Miranda and Clegg were prone to euphemism, despite Miranda accusing Clegg of being too much concerned with what was "nice", "right", or "correct". It would bear more thought into what each of their motivations were.

I definitely see where so many of our contemporary suspense/thriller novels draw their inspiration from. I read this almost in a day. Chilling!