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Summary
Summary
Middling historian Lucas Paige visits St. Louis to give a sparsely attended reading--nothing out of the ordinary. Except among the yawning attendees is someone he did not expect: Lola Faye Gilroy, the "other woman" he has long blamed for his father's murder decades earlier. Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink. As one drink turns into several, these two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. Slowly but surely, the hotel bar dissolves around them and they are transported back to the tiny southern town where this defining moment--a violent crime of passion--is turned in the light once more to reveal flaws in the old answers. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesn't know. And what he doesn't know can hurt him. Trapped in an increasingly intense emotional exchange, and with no place to go save back into his own dark past, Luke struggles to gain control of an ever more threatening conversation, to discover why Lola Faye has come and what she is after--before it is too late. A taut literary thriller in the gothic tradition of Master of the Delta .
Author Notes
THOMAS H. COOK was born in Fort Payne, Alabama. He has been nominated for Edgar Awards seven times in five different categories. He received the Best Novel Edgar, the Barry for Best Novel, and has been nominated for numerous other awards.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this tightly coiled, intellectual drama, Cook (The Chatham School Affair) unwinds a marvelously tense story of belated redemption. While in St. Louis for a book tour, Luke Page, a middle-aged writer of lackluster histories, agrees to meet with a long-forgotten acquaintance, the "little hayseed tramp" he believes triggered a bloody tragedy that befell his family decades earlier. The story alternates between Luke's recollections of his hometown; the "heady ambition" of the despicably cruel, contemptuous younger Luke, who wants to go to Harvard and gets swept up "in the lethal tide of [his] own grand dream"; and the numb, disillusioned academic who sits down for a drink with Lola Faye Gilroy. A vertiginous precipice eventually materializes in front of Luke, who must finally confront the true nature of his father's heinous murder and its equally tragic aftermath. The younger Luke is without a doubt one of the more convincing modern villains, a single-minded overachiever devoured by raging oedipal loathing and equally consumed by narcissistic ambition. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
While on a book promotion tour in St. Louis, history professor Lucas (Luke) Page has managed to unload a single autographed copy of his latest tome onto a rather dowdy but delightfully irrepressible older woman who introduces herself as Lola Faye Gilroy. She's the woman he's regarded for years as the reason for his father's murder decades before in the small town of Glenville, AL. Her appearance opens the floodgates of memory as surely as if she were Proust's madeleine. The remainder of the novel is the extended conversation between the two, fueled (for him) by glasses of pinot noir and (for her) by appletinis with occasional forays into calamari ("it's like a cross between a French fry and a rubber band"). During the evening, she develops a taste for both as the pair unearth the sins, lies, blindness, and odd murders that have brought them to where they are. Verdict Edgar and Barry Award winner Cook (The Chatham School Affair, Red Leaves) has described himself as "one of the best-known unknown writers"; with his latest he'll likely retain his title for, in this genre-driven world, mystery fans will find him discursive, while he may well be overlooked by his real audience, fans of quirky small-town fiction of the type written by Richard Russo. However, those seeking a good, old-fashioned, character-driven storyteller who offers something to mull over would do well to seek out Cook on his next book tour.-Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.