Two Days Gone

It’s cold at this time of the year around Lake Wilhelm, northern Pennsylvania. Yet Tom Huston, a famous and popular local novelist is hiding in the woods nearby. Until that day, his family seemed to be perfectly happy. His wife and his three children murdered, Tom was spotted in the street, totally confused, a bloody knife in his hand. Thus begins Tho Days Gone.

This psychological thriller goes back and forth between Tom and sergeant Ryan DeMarco, a good friend of his.
As in many other books in the same genre, this cop is not doing too well himself. His wife left him after the car accident that cost the life of their young son. So the Hustons’ tragedy hits home and doesn’t help Ryan to do his investigation in a detached way. It may even cause him to make some major and very dangerous mistakes…
But his own wounds are also a great source of understanding and compassion.

As Ryan tries to figure out what happened to Tom, he discovers his friend’s happiness was far from perfect. He had shadows in his past and for instance major sleep issues, related to the violent death of his parents.

Believe it or not, I really enjoyed the character of Tom. As a novelist, he struggles with the fine line between reality and fiction (there are fabulous pages on the topic), sometimes seeing himself as a character in one of his novels.
As Ryan goes further into his investigation, we discover many jealousies within the academic world, at the college where Tom was teaching.

We meet also a special crowd of characters in a strip club: Tom had spent several evenings in one, as research background for the character of Annabel (based on Lolita) in his upcoming novel – entitled D, with 4 parts, like Two Days Gone itself. But was it the only reason he frequented that type of places?
Lolita is only one of many literary references: Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Yeats, Samuel Butler, etc.

Some chapters, like 49, were crazy suspenseful!
And when you think you are done and you finally know all there was to the story, you are in for more extra twists!

The one thing I really didn’t like was the unnecessary multitude of f* words. I’m glad there were not many at the very beginning and the book really grabbed me from the start. Otherwise I would have stopped, like I did with a very famous and supposedly great writer. Feeling assaulted with twenty f* words in the first couple of pages, I decided I would not read his book. If you are great at the art of writing, you should be able to find some variations on the theme. If your characters have such limited vocabulary, no thanks, I’ll go meet other more interesting people.

VERDICT: Super suspenseful thriller enriched with a great reflection on the art of writing and the connection between the author and his characters.

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK?
Which thriller is your favorite this year so far?
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