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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
definitely a product of its time and i’m realizing that paranormal mystery seemingly just isn’t my thing, but it was fine.
the biggest disappointment was that i got this book from a garage sale in eau claire and the woman said it was the best of the hundreds she was selling, and it unfortunately did not live up to that. but hey, at least now i know
the biggest disappointment was that i got this book from a garage sale in eau claire and the woman said it was the best of the hundreds she was selling, and it unfortunately did not live up to that. but hey, at least now i know
I was recommended this book as I’m from Georgia and know some of the tales from Lake Lanier. I was hoping for less fiction, but for what it was..it was a pretty interesting story. A tale of murder and forgotten children..like a Tv show season. This is the second Stuart Woods book I’ve read. He’s a good story teller, maybe I just feel like these books are made for older people and not a 20-something.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Under the Lake by Stuart Woods:
Synopsis: Middle-aged male writer admits literary and physical impotence, moves to the country to recover his mojo, winds up solving a mystery involving an underwater town and a crooked sheriff, bones all the ladies. Apparently solving things makes him feel better.
...D'y'ever feel like maybe a change of scenery will make everything better? Like if you could just move out to a cheerful little cabin besides a bucolic lake, that writer's block would disappear, maybe your old investigative reporter senses would kick in and you'd discover the town's crooked sheriff boned both his fiancee's 12-year-old sister and his own daughter as part of covering up his murder spree?
Yeah. ME NEITHER.
Anyway. John Howell is a drunk, middle-aged Pulitzer Prize-winning (O.o) investigative reporter turned kept husband who's stalled on writing the Great American Novel (o.O) and lost interest in his beautiful, successful business-owning wife who forgives his impotence. His brother-in-law attempts to get him sober by getting him secretly hired to ghost-write the autobiography of a fried chicken magnate (fuck it, I'm out of eyebrows already), which John does by moving to scenic and hella rural Sutherland, Georgia.
Things basically go wrong from the get-go, with John's suicide attempt foiled by a Mysterious Thunderstorm and a ghost, then he saves the sheriff's life in a convenience store shoot-out (c'mon, someone lend me some damn eyebrows, we're on like page 14) and random strangers follow John home and conduct a seance in his cabin, inviting the ghost to reappear. Meanwhile, John discovers an old newspaper gal-pal working undercover at the sheriff's office, bones her, then goes to the home of a mysterious and scandalous hill family to get his back fixed by the family's lovely daughter, bones her, then gets a letter from his wife all DON'T COME HOME THANKS THERE'S SOMEONE ELSE. At which point he throws a hissyfit.
Now, in all fairness, I'd like to pause here to point out a couple things.
One, this book is not terribly written. It has above-average mechanics and a vividly descriptive writing style. It has that going for it.
But more importantly, two, the protagonist does in fact recognize the hypocritical loserness of getting mad about his wife's infidelity while boning two women who are not actually his wife. And that right there basically saved the book for me, because otherwise having to listen to this over-entitled little man-boy stomp about his cabin drinking Scotch, scheduling more bonings and hanging out with the corrupt local sheriff could've put this one squarely on the Oy Vay Gevalt shelf, and as of this writing I have in fact backed over a book with my car because it pissed me off so much. I have feels about books, is what.
But see, there's a drowned town in this one.
And I do love me some drowned town. Blame Blackwater, my newly discovered interest in the Quabbin Valley and this incredibly fabulous resource for reading all about drowned towns. Also feel free to lose yourself in that last site entirely, as that person loves the lissssssts and is incredibly research-oriented.
Meanwhile, back at the lake, it looks like while the sheriff is more than likely involved in a complicated money-laundering scheme with the National Guard (seriously, I'm about to use one of the dogs' eyebrows. Help a sister out) John's on the track of Sutherland's reclusive and ultra-wealthy patriarch, who bought out all the land in the valley in order to flood it and obtain a monopoly on hydro-electric power. Sounds legit, right? Except a bitter lawyer in town tells John, totally conveniently, about the rumor that one family refused to be bought out, then all disappeared one night and the patriarch took the deed to their land to the bank the next morning.
Cue John Howell having Mysterious Visions at his lake-side cabin of a dark car pulling up to the disappeared family's house, screams from inside, then the lake all lake-ing over everything.
Anyway, to make a long story short, it was the sheriff the whole time, as he is waaaaaay more corrupt than anyone gave him credit for, and considering he's money-laundering with the National Guard, that's really saying something.
He kills the patriarch, he takes John and the undercover newspaper gal hostage and, in true Bond villain style, tells them all about how he was engaged to the eldest daughter of the holdout family, but her 12-year-old sister seduced him! And killed everyone! And was going to lie about the affair! So he killed her! And she turns out to be the ghost in John's cabin who, blessedly, he has managed not to sleep with. But the gal-pal is secretly the sheriff's daughter with the 12-year-old! And he slept with her too! Then luckily for everyone the sheriff throws himself in the lake.
Now, here's my problem with all of this.
As I read entirely too much hard-boiled crime fiction, I run across these child-molesty plotlines more often than I'd like. BUT! *At no point in this book does anyone raise a hand and go, uh, no Slappy, she didn't seduce you, you molested her. Children don't seduce adults, adults molest them*. No, instead we have the sheriff, John Howell and the gal-pal all nodding and being like, yup, sucks to be the seduced sheriff, that murdering child and her terrible seductive powers all out to get this poor adult man. Enjoy the lake!
GRAH.
However! Luckily I was not alone in my feeling that perhaps this book was not possibly the Great American Novel our friend John Howell had been attempting to write when his wiener gave out on him.
Seriously, I turned around and Pickles The Pug was cheerfully in the process of applying his own review directly to the lower spinal area of this book. He's done this once before with a book that I was much less happy he'd eaten (A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie) which I wound up replacing, because Agatha Christie.
But Under the Lake... I'm torn. I mean, there's quite an obvious and quite gross fear-of-the-pussy going on in this book (the eldest daughter of the hill family turns out to be boning John because she wants a baby, then refuses to let him be involved in the resulting pregnancy and y'all I just can't--), as well as the fact that there are no women with agency save the 12-year-old mass murderer who is vilified for seducing a grown man.
I FIND THIS PROBLEMATIC.
But good writing and a well-paced mystery are compelling reasons not to go warm up the car, especially as it's like 10 degrees F outside so this whole process would take awhile.
But Pickles regrets nothing.
It was time to panic, Scotty thought. The only thing she could think of was to faint.
Scotty had never fainted before, not even in the worst moments of her life, but she was so frightened that very little acting was required. She simply placed a hand on her forehead, then crumpled in sections at Bo's feet like an elongated sack of oranges.
Bo's inexperience with fainting apparently matched Scotty's, because he reacted as if she had taken an arrow to the chest.
Synopsis: Middle-aged male writer admits literary and physical impotence, moves to the country to recover his mojo, winds up solving a mystery involving an underwater town and a crooked sheriff, bones all the ladies. Apparently solving things makes him feel better.
...D'y'ever feel like maybe a change of scenery will make everything better? Like if you could just move out to a cheerful little cabin besides a bucolic lake, that writer's block would disappear, maybe your old investigative reporter senses would kick in and you'd discover the town's crooked sheriff boned both his fiancee's 12-year-old sister and his own daughter as part of covering up his murder spree?
Yeah. ME NEITHER.
Anyway. John Howell is a drunk, middle-aged Pulitzer Prize-winning (O.o) investigative reporter turned kept husband who's stalled on writing the Great American Novel (o.O) and lost interest in his beautiful, successful business-owning wife who forgives his impotence. His brother-in-law attempts to get him sober by getting him secretly hired to ghost-write the autobiography of a fried chicken magnate (fuck it, I'm out of eyebrows already), which John does by moving to scenic and hella rural Sutherland, Georgia.
Things basically go wrong from the get-go, with John's suicide attempt foiled by a Mysterious Thunderstorm and a ghost, then he saves the sheriff's life in a convenience store shoot-out (c'mon, someone lend me some damn eyebrows, we're on like page 14) and random strangers follow John home and conduct a seance in his cabin, inviting the ghost to reappear. Meanwhile, John discovers an old newspaper gal-pal working undercover at the sheriff's office, bones her, then goes to the home of a mysterious and scandalous hill family to get his back fixed by the family's lovely daughter, bones her, then gets a letter from his wife all DON'T COME HOME THANKS THERE'S SOMEONE ELSE. At which point he throws a hissyfit.
Now, in all fairness, I'd like to pause here to point out a couple things.
One, this book is not terribly written. It has above-average mechanics and a vividly descriptive writing style. It has that going for it.
But more importantly, two, the protagonist does in fact recognize the hypocritical loserness of getting mad about his wife's infidelity while boning two women who are not actually his wife. And that right there basically saved the book for me, because otherwise having to listen to this over-entitled little man-boy stomp about his cabin drinking Scotch, scheduling more bonings and hanging out with the corrupt local sheriff could've put this one squarely on the Oy Vay Gevalt shelf, and as of this writing I have in fact backed over a book with my car because it pissed me off so much. I have feels about books, is what.
But see, there's a drowned town in this one.
And I do love me some drowned town. Blame Blackwater, my newly discovered interest in the Quabbin Valley and this incredibly fabulous resource for reading all about drowned towns. Also feel free to lose yourself in that last site entirely, as that person loves the lissssssts and is incredibly research-oriented.
Meanwhile, back at the lake, it looks like while the sheriff is more than likely involved in a complicated money-laundering scheme with the National Guard (seriously, I'm about to use one of the dogs' eyebrows. Help a sister out) John's on the track of Sutherland's reclusive and ultra-wealthy patriarch, who bought out all the land in the valley in order to flood it and obtain a monopoly on hydro-electric power. Sounds legit, right? Except a bitter lawyer in town tells John, totally conveniently, about the rumor that one family refused to be bought out, then all disappeared one night and the patriarch took the deed to their land to the bank the next morning.
Cue John Howell having Mysterious Visions at his lake-side cabin of a dark car pulling up to the disappeared family's house, screams from inside, then the lake all lake-ing over everything.
Anyway, to make a long story short, it was the sheriff the whole time, as he is waaaaaay more corrupt than anyone gave him credit for, and considering he's money-laundering with the National Guard, that's really saying something.
He kills the patriarch, he takes John and the undercover newspaper gal hostage and, in true Bond villain style, tells them all about how he was engaged to the eldest daughter of the holdout family, but her 12-year-old sister seduced him! And killed everyone! And was going to lie about the affair! So he killed her! And she turns out to be the ghost in John's cabin who, blessedly, he has managed not to sleep with. But the gal-pal is secretly the sheriff's daughter with the 12-year-old! And he slept with her too! Then luckily for everyone the sheriff throws himself in the lake.
Now, here's my problem with all of this.
As I read entirely too much hard-boiled crime fiction, I run across these child-molesty plotlines more often than I'd like. BUT! *At no point in this book does anyone raise a hand and go, uh, no Slappy, she didn't seduce you, you molested her. Children don't seduce adults, adults molest them*. No, instead we have the sheriff, John Howell and the gal-pal all nodding and being like, yup, sucks to be the seduced sheriff, that murdering child and her terrible seductive powers all out to get this poor adult man. Enjoy the lake!
GRAH.
However! Luckily I was not alone in my feeling that perhaps this book was not possibly the Great American Novel our friend John Howell had been attempting to write when his wiener gave out on him.
Seriously, I turned around and Pickles The Pug was cheerfully in the process of applying his own review directly to the lower spinal area of this book. He's done this once before with a book that I was much less happy he'd eaten (A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie) which I wound up replacing, because Agatha Christie.
But Under the Lake... I'm torn. I mean, there's quite an obvious and quite gross fear-of-the-pussy going on in this book (the eldest daughter of the hill family turns out to be boning John because she wants a baby, then refuses to let him be involved in the resulting pregnancy and y'all I just can't--), as well as the fact that there are no women with agency save the 12-year-old mass murderer who is vilified for seducing a grown man.
I FIND THIS PROBLEMATIC.
But good writing and a well-paced mystery are compelling reasons not to go warm up the car, especially as it's like 10 degrees F outside so this whole process would take awhile.
But Pickles regrets nothing.
Under the lake started a little slow for me, but after the first 25%, I couldn’t put it down.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Kept me entertained but was kind of weird. Didn’t love the relationships. The ending was too perfect
Now I know where James Patterson learned his style, glib, strangely lacking but strangely compelling.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced