Today at Veni, Vidi, Legi . . . A Season For The Dead by David Hewson

4.5 Stars for A Season For The Dead by David Hewson

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

My Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Amazon Rating: 3.80 / 5.00

Goodreads Rating: 3.93 / 5.00

Nick Dunne returns home on his fifth wedding anniversary to find his house in a mess and his wife, Amy, missing. He is the most obvious suspect in her suspicious disappearance and it does not take the police very long to start grilling him and tearing apart his supposedly happy marriage. As we follow Nick’s struggles with the police and local media we follow their initial courtship through Amy’s diary. This reveals that Amy comes from very wealthy parents who have a totally ideal partnership and write children’s books about Amazing Amy. She and Nick are both brilliant and beautiful, making the perfect couple as they waft through life on a cushion of Amy’s money and their charm.

Then life goes wrong. They both lose their jobs and are forced to move from the glamor of New York to the backside of nowhere, Missouri, where they need to care for Nick’s ill parents. Amy hates living without the vivacious whirlwind of the big city and her diary entries outline the cracks that appear in their marriage and Nick becomes increasingly resentful of Amy’s money, even though it is the only thing keeping them afloat. It soon becomes clear that she is scared for her life and Nick is not being entirely truthful.

It is impossible to really review this title without revealing at least one massive spoiler, so I will begin with a few points that will not spoil the ending and then give you fair warning of when to stop reading.

The initial premise of this title sounded very intriguing and I was not quite sure what to expect when I started it. Unlike most Thrillers, we do not have a simple exploration of the facts by a detective. Rather, we follow all the events through the eyes of some highly unreliable narrators so that our perceptions of the main characters are constantly shifting. This makes it a very enjoyable read, especially if you like character-driven fiction, as I do. However, it can also be a little frustrating as you attempt to sort through the facts trying to find the underlying truth of the situation: just when you feel that you have a good handle on what happened you will suddenly learn an important fact that turns everything on its head. I loved this, but I know that not everyone will.

Another problem that some of the book group expressed was with the rather unpleasant characters involved. On the whole, everyone of any importance is revealed to be an unrelentingly awful human being, which some of the group found a little too negative for their taste. Although I can understand their desire to have at least one ‘good’ character to follow, I am also willing to accept that most people are not perfect. It is also clear that most of the ‘bad’ characters are products of their upbringing, circumstances and bad decisions rather than simple, two-dimensional ‘evil’ people. We also see people who are trying to be good but who simply cannot manage to live up to that ideal.

In short: if you want an uncomplicated story of nice people doing sensible things, you should probably avoid this title.

Spoilers Ahead!

I mentioned above that we have few ‘good’ people in this book and that most definitely refers to our leads: Nick and Amy. Just as we are convinced that Nick is guilty of Amy’s murder we discover that his big secret is an affair and also that she has faked her own abduction to punish him. After this turning point our opinions of the couple swerve backwards and forwards as we uncover more and more about their personalities and lives. Ultimately, we learn that they are both narcissistic and unable to take responsibility for their own lives and emotions.

Their marriage is all sparkle and show, but is based on what they both thought would be a good idea at the time rather than love and respect. It is doomed to failure and collapses when placed under the strain of lost jobs and ill parents. Amy is too much of a perfectionist, demanding and overly critical of Nick, who is happy to simply slide through life. He resents her easy access to money, while she hates the parents that supply it because she is constantly expected to live up to the fictional Amazing Amy that they created. They are two people who should never have made the commitment to marry, but did and were than too stubborn, in Amy’s case, or indebted and lazy, in Nick’s, to realize that they should walk away from one another. 

Once it is revealed that Amy is alive it is easy to feel sorry for Nick, but it soon becomes clear that he is a man-child who is just as responsible for this mess as she is. He has drifted through life and developed an amazing ability to whine and moan about the Things Holding Him Back. He loses his job because of the rise of e-magazines and blogs, even though there are still plenty of journalists working for these organizations. Could it be that he is actually not very good as a writer? I think so. We see him spending his life stroking his own ego and occasionally condescending to dispense some of his genius as a written article to his highly unimpressed editor. Believe me, if I had been his editor he would have been the first out of the door when the downsizing came into view.

His attitude to women made me want to kick him in the balls . . . repeatedly. He is so tired of women throwing themselves at him and forcing him to have sex with them. They are so needy and always trying too hard or, if they are bitches, they simply drop him and move on. Poor baby: his life is so hard! He resents Amy for effectively paying for everything and yet he still does not get off his backside and make a serious effort to earn some cash. But it is still her fault that he feels unmanned, so he has to have an affair to make him feel better about himself. Vomit!

So, what about Amy: if Nick is such a total loser, then surely she is the good person that we should support and cheer on as she frames him for her murder? Erm, nope: she is almost exactly as irritating and deserving of physical pain as her errant husband. She is nauseatingly brilliant, beautiful and talented, but that is just a mask to hide the true psychopath lurking underneath. She is utterly ruthless about getting what she wants and nobody, NOBODY, gets away with saying “No!” to her. It is slowly revealed that she is a master manipulator who has destroyed a man by falsely accusing him of rape at least once in her life. She hates and despises all other women for some totally illogical reason and yet she can appear to be quite nice and normal when she wants to.

Basically, I wanted to lock both of them in a room and then burn down the house so that they would not be able to continue their navel-gazing, self-deluding behavior. Oh, and I would have chucked Amy’s amazingly irritating parents in their with them for good luck. It is a terrific read as long as you do not have a problem with wanting to punch many of the characters! :D

Other Reviews

Annette’s Book Spot

Novel Reveries

The Book Smugglers

I read this as part of:

Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper

My Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Amazon Rating: 4.30 / 5.00

Goodreads Rating: 4.11 / 5.00

Cassie Neill is ‘gifted’: she can enter most peoples’ minds, sometimes by simple proximity but mostly by making a connection to the person, either by eye-contact or physical touch. She can even reach some people by touching an object that they have held or worn. This makes her invaluable to the LA police as they try to catch a serial killer, but when she makes a mistake a child dies and the killer escapes. In an attempt to seek some peace, Cassie moves to sleepy Ryan’s Bluff, North Carolina, where she has inherited her aunt’s isolated house. However, it seems that murders happen even in the most unlikely of places.

Her first contact relays his fury and determination to kill the woman that he despises. In an effort to save an innocent life, Cassie speaks to the local Sheriff, but he is dismissive of her abilities and she eventually turns to Judge Ben Ryan in the hopes that he will believe her. Then a young woman is murdered and Cassie suddenly finds herself a suspect until she can prove that she is telling the truth. As the killer continues her killing spree, Cassie must work with law enforcement to uncover any clue to his identity, risking her own mental health by sharing his terrifying thoughts.

This is the first in the Bishop / Special Crimes Series, which will reach its fourteenth installment this year. Each book is a stand-alone crime mystery involving a woman with paranormal abilities who must help to catch a deranged serial killer. The common link between all the titles is the presence of Noah Bishop, an FBI Agent from the Special Crimes Unit. However, in this title Bishop does not make his appearance until the second half of the story, which left me wondering about the name of the series and slightly distracted.

However, the story was gripping enough to overcome this distraction and the Ms Hooper’s use of the killer’s Point of View at certain times added to the general air of terror and threat that he generated. The descriptions of Cassie’s experiences inside the heads of both this killer and others were very well done. They had a sense of reality, which overcame the necessary suspension of disbelief required by her abilities. I particularly appreciated that Cassie was not simply a fluffy, special bunny who had a normal life despite of her ability. As with Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, Cassie is constantly disabled by her ability, which can be as much of a curse as a gift. She shares Sookie’s feelings of separation and isolation, and even finds the same respite in the arms of a man whose mind is silent to her, even when she touches him.

I was worried that Cassie would be revealed to be quite a passive character as soon as it was obvious that this was a Paranormal Romance. However, she is a very strong personality who shows great bravery and determination throughout the plot and does not become a wet blanket as soon as the alpha male becomes evident. As someone who is wary of the Romance genre, I found this a great relief and it greatly increased my enjoyment of the book. There are Romance elements, but these are subtly done and do not reduce the heroine into a mere cipher for our wish fulfillment. Instead, we are shown the development of a strong relationship, in which both parties grow and become greater than the sum of their parts. I also felt that theirs was a relationship that I could actually believe would last into the future: so often, Romance couples make such unlikely coupling that it is almost impossible to imagine them growing old together.

Our hero, Ben, is suitably tall, dark and handsome, but he also has his issues and needs to develop as a character before he can commit to their relationship. I particularly liked his relationship with the Sherriff, which was close and yet suitably male, with a healthy dose of realism to make it more interesting. Indeed Ryan’s Bluff and its inhabitants were well realized and provided a suitably detailed backdrop for the story that unfolded. However, I would have liked certain characters to have been introduced more than a few pages before they were placed in jeopardy. There was one scene in particular where we were given several women converging on the place that we knew would be the scene of the next abduction, and I found that rather heavy handed and melodramatic. It led to a feeling of ‘red shirt syndrome’, where the least known character was obviously the one in danger.

The plot clipped along at a good pace, with plenty of shocks and lots of tension. I was particularly concerned about the dogs that were introduced as guards against the killer. I am one of those people who get more upset about a dog being murdered than a human: I am not sure what that says about me, but it is the truth. After we met them, I was in constant fear that the killer would silence the faithful doggy protector before taking out his chosen victim.

I was especially impressed by the depiction of the relationship between one of the women and her abusive former husband. Although she was only a minor character, I thought that her transition from terrified, powerless victim to newly empowered independent woman was very well done. Her inner turmoil and doubts about facing down her former abuser were inspiring and I particularly loved a scene where she warned him that if anything at all happened to her newly-acquired dog she would hold him responsible. It was very refreshing to see a positive outcome from such a horrible situation.

I am not sure that I feel a desperate need to read more in this series, but as they are all stand-alone titles, I could easily see me picking one up when I need a good solid read with an intriguing plot and strong characterization.

(First published at Not Your Ordinary Book Banter)