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RED LEAVES
by Thomas H. Cook
Quercus, May 2006
304 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 1905204124


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Eric Moore thinks he has the perfect life. He has a pretty wife Meredith, and a teenage son Keith, he's close to his loser brother Warren and he runs a photo developing shop. It's not exactly a huge empire, but he's built it up from nothing. And then, suddenly, Eric's life starts to unravel.

Keith is asked to babysit for eight-year-old Amy Giordano, the daughter of some neighbours. Next day, though, the girl has disappeared. Keith insists he had nothing to do with her disappearance. But as the police start probing what happened, Eric begins to ask questions about his family life and whether in fact his son is guilty.

As the book unfolds, Eric begins to wonder if he really knows his son and also what the boy is hiding. Keith claims he walked home from the babysitting, but Eric knows he heard a car pull into the drive at the time Keith arrived home.

Meredith, a college lecturer, seems preoccupied, meanwhile, and is attending staff meetings at some very odd times. And some of the things she tells Eric don't quite tally.

RED LEAVES is a tight, tense, claustrophobic piece of writing. It's a painful study of a man's life falling apart. Eric's reaction to what is happening in his life is like picking at a scab -- you know it's going to bleed and sting, but you can't resist it.

The mystery element isn't huge, but it doesn't need to be. And if you guess, as I did, whodunit, it doesn't really matter. I guessed several of the strands, but it certainly didn't spoil the book for me.

RED LEAVES is top-quality writing. Thomas H Cook paces the novel in an exemplary manner, doling out small nuggets, all seen through Eric's increasingly frantic eyes. Most impressive is the way the author juggles the present and past tense sections, the former presaging painfully how it doesn't take much for a life to fall apart.

You'll likely do as I did, and read RED LEAVES in one sitting. And it's a book, once you close it, that will stay in your mind for quite some time afterwards.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, May 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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