Eyes

Felice Picano's first three novels were thrillers reflecting their time, echoing the best of Stephen King and Peter Blatty. Eyes, his second novel, became a book club choice and was turned into a stage play. Using the backdrop of late 1960s New York, it's a time capsule of the city's era of upcoming professionals, cozy neighborhoods, and the role of the telephone in daily lives. Stu is a quiet, orderly, latently anxious young man with a girlfriend in and out of his life.
He lives in a walkup in a modest New York apartment block, facing another apartment block. HIs life changes when a slightly disembodied voice on the telephone, Joan, begins a nightly harangue, goading him, seducing him, watching him from ... where? She knows what he's doing, and apparently, thinking. After the girlfriend leaves him, the stakes rise: Stu is desperate to figure out who Joan is. When Johanna enters his life in a chance meeting, he has no idea the two are the same person.
His obsession grows: he haunts the apartment block opposite looking for clues and befriends an old woman who claims to be a countess ... and warns him against Joan. Hopelessly obsessed with Joan/Johanna, a final confrontation is inevitable. This new edition is accompanied by an afterword by the author.