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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Well-written but uninteresting book that plods along without much of a payoff.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Fatphobia, Sexual violence, Violence, Murder
Only read this because the movie had recently come out. Don't bother: anticlimactic and a hum-drum read.
once i started reading i just couldn't stop. i did think the story died in some places yet i felt i needed to finish it in it's entirety. the characters were very in depth and overall good read.
Sultry, sexy, poignant. The characters sweat off the page, and the heavy moist air of the deep south seeps into your nostrils as you read.
Set in small town Florida, 1969, this episodic novel explores the relationship between two brothers raised in a newspaper family - one of whom is writing a story about a (possibly) wrongfully convicted murderer. Further, it's a meditation on masculinity. Absorbing and worth your while.
Set in small town Florida, 1969, this episodic novel explores the relationship between two brothers raised in a newspaper family - one of whom is writing a story about a (possibly) wrongfully convicted murderer. Further, it's a meditation on masculinity. Absorbing and worth your while.
I picked this up on a whim -- partly because I wanted to try something from Dexter, and partly because before I watch the apparently fantastically bad movie version, I want to have the original book to compare it to. Set in 1969, the story revolves around two brothers involved in the newspaper business, the elder Ward as a reporter for the Miami Herald, and his 20-year-old sibling Jack as a delivery driver for their father's daily paper in (fictional) Moat County in central Florida.
There's a semblance of a thriller plot, as Ward returns home with his northeastern brahmin reporting partner, Yardley Acheman, to investigate a death row case. Backswamp white trash thug Hillary Van Wetter sits in jail convicted of the murder of a sheriff who was himself notorious for killing around twenty people (almost all black) during his years on the job. Death row groupie and general femme fatale/aging sexpot Charlotte is enlisted by the reporters to assist, and Jack is hired to chauffeur them around. The bulk of the book follows a kind of period procedural thriller template, tracing the steps of their investigation, while dangling the threat of Charlotte as a cat among pigeons.
Of course, the really dangerous person is Acheman, and the final third wades through the aftermath of his and Ward's story on Van Wetter. At which point, the book offers no tidy answers (which is fine, I don't need them), but seems more interested in throwing a bunch of themes at the wall and embellishing on the general southern gothic tone. There's a good deal of water and nature imagery (and Dexter isn't exactly subtle about it: Moat County, Van Wetter, etc...), some gruesome attacks on the brothers (one by jellyfish, one by sailors), themes of self-destruction, rather perfunctory father/son/family issues, treatment of journalistic ethics and generations, creepy apartment buildings, meditations on manhood, and more. It's an uneasy stew that never blended all that well for me and left me wondering what the point of it all was.
Note: After finishing the book, I watched the film version, and it is spectacularly bad. And even though the book's author was involved in the screenplay, there
There's a semblance of a thriller plot, as Ward returns home with his northeastern brahmin reporting partner, Yardley Acheman, to investigate a death row case. Backswamp white trash thug Hillary Van Wetter sits in jail convicted of the murder of a sheriff who was himself notorious for killing around twenty people (almost all black) during his years on the job. Death row groupie and general femme fatale/aging sexpot Charlotte is enlisted by the reporters to assist, and Jack is hired to chauffeur them around. The bulk of the book follows a kind of period procedural thriller template, tracing the steps of their investigation, while dangling the threat of Charlotte as a cat among pigeons.
Of course, the really dangerous person is Acheman, and the final third wades through the aftermath of his and Ward's story on Van Wetter. At which point, the book offers no tidy answers (which is fine, I don't need them), but seems more interested in throwing a bunch of themes at the wall and embellishing on the general southern gothic tone. There's a good deal of water and nature imagery (and Dexter isn't exactly subtle about it: Moat County, Van Wetter, etc...), some gruesome attacks on the brothers (one by jellyfish, one by sailors), themes of self-destruction, rather perfunctory father/son/family issues, treatment of journalistic ethics and generations, creepy apartment buildings, meditations on manhood, and more. It's an uneasy stew that never blended all that well for me and left me wondering what the point of it all was.
Note: After finishing the book, I watched the film version, and it is spectacularly bad. And even though the book's author was involved in the screenplay, there
Uh, dark. Very dark. Well written, engaging characters, but not my cup of tea.
Good mystery - interesting characters and engaging conversations.
Not the best book of the year or anything - but well worth the time to read it, if you're a fan of mystery/thrillers - which I am. I didn't guess the ending ahead of time (always a good thing, in my opinion!)
Certainly not the fault of the author - but the ebook is a mess - has a lot of blank pages to flip through occasionally because of misformatting. Not a huge deal, but a bit of a pain in the proverbial when reading.
Not the best book of the year or anything - but well worth the time to read it, if you're a fan of mystery/thrillers - which I am. I didn't guess the ending ahead of time (always a good thing, in my opinion!)
Certainly not the fault of the author - but the ebook is a mess - has a lot of blank pages to flip through occasionally because of misformatting. Not a huge deal, but a bit of a pain in the proverbial when reading.
The question that I still have is that who kill the police it was really Hillary or someone else?