Book Review: Desert Places

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Desert Places     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Blake Crouch
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Hard Boiled

Andrew Thomas is a successful author with an established reputation as a writer of suspense fiction. In the easy days which follow the completion of a manuscript and precede a book tour for a recently published volume, he receives a strange letter revealing that a dead woman has been buried on his property, and evidence exists which will implicate him in her death.

Every impluse in me screamed - "call the police!" "engage an attorney!" "don't wait!" I'm convinced we would have had a good book to read if events had turned in that direction. But, Crouch has more disturbing passages for us, and a much more original plot.

To say much more would give away quite a bit. We learn that Thomas has a twin brother, long estranged. Their lives will intertwine again and a fierce, intimate battle will ensue. Action will move from the deserted high plains of Wyoming to a small college town in New England, and back again. When at last a horrific memory returns to him, Thomas will come to terms with his own dark impulses, and when events conclude the reader will be left pondering the question of exactly who won the conflict. One answer to that question is surely "no one."

Very very dark.

Woodstock - RAM

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