Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Instruments of Night by Thomas H. Cook ISBN: 0-553-57820-0 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (40 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: This darkness is too deep for both writer and reader
Comment: Thomas H. Cook's other novels--I've read all I can--offer a tragic but ultimately humane vision of human fallibility, remorse, and reparation through love and decency. Usually, his main characters are suffering greatly from a wrong in which they somehow participated, through naivete, misunderstanding, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even outright wrongdoing. This novel is no exception, but unfortunately the darkness of past experience is not just too much for the main character in the novel, it's too much for Cook himself. His usual excellence is eclipsed. Literally, something is blocking the light that keeps shining in the world, no matter what evil is done there. There's a truth in what Cook creates--a person who has seen and experienced the horror that haunts the main character, aptly named Graves, is unlikely to be able to recover. Suicidal thinking and self destructive isolation are truly and honestly the frequent resort of people who have been so inhumanly traumatized. What's worrying about this book is that Graves and Cook himself start to seem indistinguishable. Graves's past, his fictional creations, and the case he's working on merge into a single story--and through accidents of writing, Cook seems to reveal that he is merging with all of it himself. At one point Graves INCORRECTLY quotes Tolstoy's famous saying: "Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way," by saying: "All families are unhappy,..." Whose mistake is that? I'm afraid it is Cook's mistake, one that reveals him in so dark a frame of mind that his memory is distorted, his vision as dark and negative as his character's. Clearly his purpose in writing this meditation on a downward spiral was not the putative MAIN plot, which is weak, and reuses plot devices Cook has used more skilfully before. He really intends to get right to the bottom with Graves. It's always a temptation in reading him to feel a confusion between narrator and author, to wonder who really WAS that lost girl with the dark hair and what really WAS the irretrievable moment for which he can't atone. This time, those sources of anguish seem to have overwhelmed the artist's ability to get distance from his own work, or to give us any air or light. I, for one, hope that the novel's last line "Never, no. Never." will be true, and that Mr. Cook will not surrender, and WILL return many more times, with the incandescence of his beautiful prose, to cast the light of simple decency on whatever darkness haunts his characters--or him.
Rating: 5
Summary: Cook can write!!!!!
Comment: To those initiates lucky enough to have discovered Thomas H. Cook, it is no surprise that he has won an Edgar, it is more of a surprise that he has not won more. Cook tends to write novels that focus on the inner workings of characters (and the demons they face) as they work on solving a mystery, the original crimes have usually taken place in the past and are still somehow linked to the present.
Cook weaves his narratives so well that you never know what is coming - he leads you where he wants and suddenly the twists and turns set in and by the end of the book, you never know what hit you! Instruments of Night is much like his other novels in that the main character, Paul Graves, is helping to discover the truth about a mystery of the past. Graves is an author who writes a series about a killer named Kessler, his lackey Sykes and the detective that is always in pursuit Slovak, which is set in old New York. Graves is invited up to Riverwood, an artist's retreat, by the owner Alison Davies to look into a murder that happened 30 years earlier.
Davies is looking for closure and as Graves, with the help of the other summer guest Eleanor Stern, delves deeper into murder of young Faye he also must look deep within himself to keep his own demons at bay. Graves must face his past, the death of his parents and the gruesome murder of his sister Gwen, in order to create a plausible story about Faye's death and complete the task that Davies has put before him.
Cook does what he does best in Instruments - he keeps the reader on the edge of their seat and keeps them guessing. I thought I had it all figured out and then WHAMO!!!! A new twist and turn, then I thought I had it wrapped up again and BLAM!!!! Out of no where - I was stunned!
This is what makes Thomas Cook one of the best writers out there. You always know that there are twists and turns but the endings never cease to amaze - and they are always so realistic. He also has Graves imagine different stories throughout the book - and even tho most of them are short - they are so well drawn that the reader can't imagine another possibility. I highly recommend Cook and Instruments of Night.
Rating: 1
Summary: Tedious and lurid
Comment: Fifty years ago, the peaceful artist's community of Riverwood was shattered by the murder of young Faye Harrison. The killer was never caught. In the present Paul Graves, a famous writer of detective stories, is called by one of the residents to give Faye's dying mother a plausible explanation of what happened to her daughter. It does not have to be a true one, as long as it is believable.
But Graves is a haunted man who has seen his older sister brutally murdered years ago, and his books all feature the namesake of the man who killed her, as well as plumbing the depths of darkness within the human mind. Gloomy and tormented by his memories, he is determined to find out the truth about what happened to Faye, even if it means confronting his own demons.
This is a book not for the faint-hearted. In the short space allotted to him to probe the depths of a killer's mind, Cook manages to pack about every ignomity done by man to (wo)man, with the possible exception of rape (only alluded at). But this display of gruesomeness grows tedious and seems to serve no interest other than to shock the reader. What a pity. The initial premise was quite original, but the story lapses into a detective-cum-psychological thriller that not only features irritating 'revelations' by convenient witnesses (the policeman in charge of the case fifty years back not only has a son, but the man is willing to help two perfect strangers as they rifle through his papers and cast dispersion on his father's honesty) but also a rather bland dénouement.
The ending was supposed to be a surprise,I surmise. But Graves' role in his sister's death was obvious from the beginning, and the final explanation of how Faye was killed leaves something to be desired (to be honest, I thought this kind of resolution was a no-go in detective stories; I mean this is cheating). And the language grows a little too florid, even if I understand that it is partly due to Paul's taste for melodrama.
Avoid.
 |
Title: Places in the Dark by Thomas H. Cook ISBN: 0553580671 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 27 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
 |
Title: Mortal Memory by Thomas H. Cook ISBN: 055356532X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
 |
Title: Breakheart Hill by Thomas H. Cook ISBN: 0553571923 Publisher: Crime Line Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
 |
Title: Evidence of Blood by Thomas H. Cook ISBN: 0553578367 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 02 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
 |
Title: The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook ISBN: 0553571931 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
