I've been reading Bell for a while now. In fact, probably read every single book he’s written. They’ve been somewhat uneven, quality wise, but mostly good. So I requested his new one right as it showed up on Netgalley without hesitating and sure enough, it’s one from the mostly (more on this in detail later) good category.
This book from its clever literary title to the contents was very much a write what you know sort of thing. The main protagonist is an English professor in a small Kentucky college in a small Kentucky town, much like the author. White, middle class, middle aged…and let’s hope that’s where the similarities end, because he’s also a barely coping widower, semi functional depressed drunk (though working on that) and unable to write a single creative word. That’s Connor Nye’s life, sort of floundering. Unable to secure tenure due to inability to publish and desperate, he does something immoral, but reasonable…plagiarism. Takes a manuscript of a missing young woman he used to teach and publishes it as his own. It’s good, certainly more so than any book Connor of his university buddies has written. Good enough to get attention and in this case all kinds of wrong attention. First, from the missing young woman, who is very much alive, back and wants her cut. Second, from the cops, because the murder described in a book all too closely resembles an unsolved local one from two years ago. Now Connor is in a sea of doodoo and it takes all his effort to just stay upright. So there you have it…a pretty typical murder suspense thriller set in a world of small town academia to make things more interesting. All the genre standards are present…multiple perspectives, multiple timelines, twist ending, etc. This is Bell’s eight novel (let’s hope his tenure is secure), all in the same genre, so he’s basically a pro, this reads like it was done by a pro, all the boxes checked and so on. Good character development. Mostly. This’ll tie in with the earlier mostly. Because it seems the author got too clever with the final twist and abandoned basic plausibility in order to make it stick. The final plot twist is such a crucial thing to the genre that one must take great care discussing it and I’ll try, but reader be warned and take caution proceeding…because the thoughts on the final twist are to follow in the next paragraph. Ok, so I’ve had my suspicions about the killer for a while, but Bell cleverly deflected them until the end. The novel was flying along with great confidence but it didn’t quite stick the landing. The final twist is kind of like…really? that totally doesn’t jive with the character or at least the character as they were presented until now. Why would you go all confessional when you have so much to risk and there’s no evidence against you and all the witnesses are dead? Just so the author can hit the goal of twisting that plot and stunning his readers? Well, this reader didn’t buy it. It might work for others, though. And we’re back, that was nice and generic, wasn’t it? Anyway, so that ending was the book’s main detractor for me to cherrytop minor detractor of the book’s size, (like most Americans) too unnecessarily fat as in not enough muscle beneath the bulk. Mostly heavy padding through exhaustive narrative hopping around. The book should have been way leaner. To Bell’s credit (pro, remember) it doesn’t read like a long book, it’s very dialogue driven and therefore reads quickly enough and easily. And it is fun, it is mostly fun. Enough to recommend it. With fairly interesting and realistic characters and perfectly oriented to the present day MeToo zeitgeist. Kudos to the author for being so woke and a strange knack for writing very believable young women among other things. So evil professors in small town academia preying on damsels in thesis mode…there you go. Overall entertaining read. Thanks Netgalley.
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