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A heinous child murder rocks a small town, especially when incontrovertible evidence, both DNA and eyewitness, makes it inarguable that the murderer is Terry Maitland, a well-liked football coach who's never done anything wrong ever. Except then more incontrovertible evidence, both fingerprint and eyewitness, proves that he could not have committed the crime as he was far away when it occurred. What in the world is going on?
Much like the preceding Mr. Mercedes novels, this book was extremely readable and had some great bits, but was frustratingly uneven and less than the sum of its parts. It sets up an intriguing dilemma and takes so long over the question of "are some things just inherently unknowable" that you expect it to be about that, but it isn't really.
It's actually about a supernatural doppelgänger. Which is kind of the only possible answer if there's going to be any answer at all, other than "previously unknown identical twin," which I'm surprised didn't have some characters pursuing because it would be the only possible real-life explanation.
Terry is too much of a saint, IMO. It kind of worked as a red herring because you expect there to be more to him, a la A Good Marriage, but then... there isn't.
It's an oddly weighted book as for a doppelgänger story, it takes forever to get to that. It's got some interesting stuff on belief and disbelief, and an extreme amount of mystery-style detecting, but that all goes away once it's clearly a doppelgänger. And then the final confrontation with it is enjoyable but a bit anticlimactic after the extreme creepiness of earlier bits like where it reaches its hand from behind the shower curtain AIEEEEE! I also wanted to revel more in the mechanics of the shapeshifting and the worms (AIEEEEE!) but we didn't get as much of that as I wanted.
But like I said, the book is very, very readable. I started listening to it on audio read by Will Patton, but had to stop when Holly Gibney showed up, because his take on her style of speaking was so incredibly annoying. I then continued in print form and ended up staying up till 3:00 AM to finish.
Also, the heroine was very refreshing. She's a gray-haired, middle-aged woman on the spectrum with severe social anxiety who takes Lexapro, and she's badass and great. The books she appears in aren't my favorites, but I love that she exists.
The Outsider
Much like the preceding Mr. Mercedes novels, this book was extremely readable and had some great bits, but was frustratingly uneven and less than the sum of its parts. It sets up an intriguing dilemma and takes so long over the question of "are some things just inherently unknowable" that you expect it to be about that, but it isn't really.
It's actually about a supernatural doppelgänger. Which is kind of the only possible answer if there's going to be any answer at all, other than "previously unknown identical twin," which I'm surprised didn't have some characters pursuing because it would be the only possible real-life explanation.
Terry is too much of a saint, IMO. It kind of worked as a red herring because you expect there to be more to him, a la A Good Marriage, but then... there isn't.
It's an oddly weighted book as for a doppelgänger story, it takes forever to get to that. It's got some interesting stuff on belief and disbelief, and an extreme amount of mystery-style detecting, but that all goes away once it's clearly a doppelgänger. And then the final confrontation with it is enjoyable but a bit anticlimactic after the extreme creepiness of earlier bits like where it reaches its hand from behind the shower curtain AIEEEEE! I also wanted to revel more in the mechanics of the shapeshifting and the worms (AIEEEEE!) but we didn't get as much of that as I wanted.
But like I said, the book is very, very readable. I started listening to it on audio read by Will Patton, but had to stop when Holly Gibney showed up, because his take on her style of speaking was so incredibly annoying. I then continued in print form and ended up staying up till 3:00 AM to finish.
Also, the heroine was very refreshing. She's a gray-haired, middle-aged woman on the spectrum with severe social anxiety who takes Lexapro, and she's badass and great. The books she appears in aren't my favorites, but I love that she exists.
The Outsider
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Holly has some verbal tics that feel more King-like than actually likely, but other than that, she feels extremely real and we both know lots and lots of people like her. They just don't normally get to be the heroines of bestsellers. I also love that she takes psych meds and goes to therapy and it's not something weird or bad or that she needs to rise above, it's just part of her life. You don't see that in genre fiction very often. And she still really struggles with social interactions, but she has a good life and is heroic, not as some kind of magic mental illness power, but because she chooses to be.
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I just saw Men in Black: International last night, and I loved the moment early on where Tessa Thompson's character, having spent twenty years tracking down the MiBs, goes on about how "and everybody said I needed therapy -- which, okay, they were right -- but not for this!" It acknowledges that one can need therapy for reasons other than being delusional, and that heroic main characters are not incompatible with this concept.
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I thought the buildup to the final confrontation was fabulously tense, but then the actual confrontation kind of fizzles.
(have you read Elevation? It's like a cheerful community-building retake on Thinner :D )
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I did read Elevation and that's a perfect description of it. It was kind of slight but sweet, and I really loved the climax at the race.
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