A review by nohoperadio
The Trees by Percival Everett

2.75

I was excited to read this, and I can tell Percival Everett was excited when he had the idea, but eh. The book’s central mystery was hampered in its power to grip me by my suspicion–planted early and vindicated late–that the mystery’s resolution would be more poetic than clever. Which I’m fine with in theory, but it does mean that the actual experience of reading the book consisted mostly of following a bunch of detectives discussing clues and theories that I kinda knew would amount to nothing, but didn’t know quite confidently enough to feel like I could ignore any of it. The promise of a detective novel is that you will be rewarded for paying attention to details, and this book isn’t interested in following through on that promise.

Also, people kept telling me it was funny and it wasn’t that funny! I liked the joke about the diner’s rush hour but most of the comedy here is just the various interchangeable jaded detectives being interchangeably dry and sardonic.

Props to the graphic design team though obviously.