As good as anything I've read over the last few years. Robert McCammon is a brilliant story teller.

3.5 stars

I had never read a Robert McCammon book before and I almost gave up on it early, which would have been a real travesty. It took a bit for me to immerse myself in his style and the early pages detailed a character, whose actions were so vile, that I really didn't know if I wanted to continue. So, I put the book aside.

But I knew from the description that I hadn't yet met one of the main characters, so I picked it up again, a few days later, to see if it got better for me. And I inhaled the rest in two nights. I'll long remember these characters and this story, with its haunting ending, and I will be sure to check out more from this author.

This book was weird. I don't remember why I put it on hold but as I was reading it, I had to keep re-calibrating what kind of book I thought it was going to be. It starts with a guy who is a traveling salesman/scam artist with a pretty sadistic streak, so I thought it was going to be about him as the bad guy since he was described as the embodiment of evil. Then he teams up with a female scam artist who is REALLY sadistic and it turns out that he is kind of dumb and not totally competent, so maybe she is the big bad. The two of them come up with this plot to kidnap to children in a long con and then escape to Mexico with the ransom money. Then the next part of the book starts and it is about this black man named Curtis who has a supernatural ability to hear some people's thoughts, but only the thoughts of others who are also "listeners," so he can carry on conversations with them across some distance. Think The Shining - in fact, think exactly The Shining, because there was so much of this that felt like a direct reference/tribute/rip-off of that book where a magical black man helps a white child with the same magical ability who is in a dangerous situation. Curtis is able to connect with the young girl who has been kidnapped by the two swindlers and he helps the authorities track them down.

I don't know- this book felt so weird to me. Everyone was acting in unrealistic ways. It felt problematic that a magical black man had to sacrifice his own safety to come to the rescue of beautiful wealthy white children. I kept questioning why he had to be black and they had to be white. Curtis' "listening" ability wasn't interesting as a supernatural phenomenon. They didn't really explore what it meant or the things that might be challenging about it. It was almost like he just had a private cell phone that connected to the kidnapped girl, and what is exciting about that? Also, there was this random maybe implied supernatural thing, or maybe a psychological disorder (?) going on with the female con artist that made no sense and just seemed to be thrown in there for no reason that made sense to me. I guess I just expected this book to be something different.

In this story, set in Depression-era New Orleans, McCammon has created a memorable cast of heroes and villains, which, along with an intriguing story and smooth prose, keeps the story barreling forward to a thrilling finish. While the supernatural element does loom large in the story, it plays no part in the main conflict. It is simply a crime suspense story about the kidnapping of the two children of a wealthy industrialist, and two of the characters are able to communicate with each other telepathically.

As skilled a writer as McCammon is, though, I was disappointed in two scenes he wrote that utilized two horrible tropes of the horror genre. In one,

Spoiler

a character who has been beaten to within an inch of his death is able to muster the strength, using a sharpened stick, to lance a person clean through the body, like the proverbial hot knife through butter. In another, a seemingly "dead" person suddenly springs up, alive, for one last gasp effort.

So, minus one star for those two silly bits. Other than that, if you are a McCammon fan, or you just enjoy a ripping crime thriller, I can heartily recommend this book.

Just a beautifully crafted story. Exceptional characters with so much life and depth. McCammon is the ultimate storyteller.

My new rule on five stars is that the book shouldn’t startle me out of my willing suspension of disbelief with awkward writing, inconsistent characters, stupid plot twists or anything else annoying. I’m already breaking my rule. McCammon occasionally comes up with a simile that’s so ridiculous I just had to stop and shake my head; but on the whole, it’s a really great book. This is genre fiction, but it reads like literature. The characters and the setting are gritty and real. I could tell where the plot was going, but I was surprised at how it got there so it was ok. Take a plunge into depression-era Louisiana and prepare to be surprised.