It stands to mention that the author is an Edinburgh solicitor. With an apparent boner for all things Americana, specifically the neo-noir variety of small towns and brutal crimes. This is a not unusual thing, from books to Guillermo De Toro’s recent Nightmare Alley. The exoticism of noir cannot be denied, neo or otherwise.
Anyway, in Ashkanani’s first book he welcomes you to Cooper, a fictional Nebraska town as dirty and crime-heavy and bleak as any noir would have its setting be. And sure enough, it’s a bleak story of a detective and a serial killer battling wills and wits. A solid debut. In this, his sophomore effort, the author takes you back to Cooper for an (arguably) even darker and more disturbing visit. Takes you back in time too, back to pager time. Another set of cops, this time a dedicated local and his newly assigned partner, a cowboy-looking fresh outta Texas detective. Together they set off to investigate a brutal slaying of a local family, made all the more brutal for the main protagonist since it occurs in the walls that housed his childhood once upon a time. In a parallel narration, there’s a cult. A relatively small cult on a verge of boiling over into the sort of final act madness that makes the news. Gotta love a good cult story. The two tales connect in interesting and unpredictable ways. In fact, one of the best things about this book, is its unpredictability – a must for a discerning mystery reader. But it has other strengths too, mainly the writing itself. Ashkanani’s debut was good, this is really, really good. This is a talented author stepping up his game kind of good. It’s visceral realism at its best, a bleak place rendered with cinematic vividness so much so that it becomes it own character. Nebraska is never inviting in fiction, not the fiction I’ve read, but it does always lend itself to a sort of oppressiveness and here, once again, it hangs over the characters like a heavy grey cloud, obscuring all light. And in the ensuing darkness, desperate, traumatized people do terrible things to each other. Now that’s noir, that’s the very soul of it. What lurks in the shadowy corners of the mind, the soul, the street… The author gets it just right. Well done. This dark dynamic read is neo-noir at its finest and ought to delight mystery fans of all varieties. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
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