Mortal Memory

Thomas H. Cook

Sep 2011 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

The Edgar Award–winning author “builds a family portrait in which violence seems both impossible and inevitable . . . surprising and devastating” (Chicago Tribune).
 Steve Farris was nine years old in 1959, the youngest child in a family that was about to be snuffed out. Around four o’clock on an ordinary November afternoon, Steve’s father loaded his shotgun. With calm precision he killed his teenaged son and daughter, and then turned the weapon on his wife. For two hours he waited for his youngest son to come home from school. When Steve did not appear, his father drove away, disappearing for good. Now a successful architect, Farris has spent his life avoiding the memories of that dark day. But questions from an author writing a book about the crime bring back impressions from the days leading up to the killing. For the first time he must confront his awful past, and the terrifying possibility that his father had a reason for what he did.

Ratings and reviews

BOTTOM-LINE: Not everything happened the way you remember . PLOT OR PREMISE: A young boy loses his mother, sister and brother to an apparent killing spree of his father. Years later, an author tracks down the boy, now a man with a wife and son, and asks him to remember the details of their last few months together. . WHAT I LIKED: The basic plot is somewhat interesting in that it deals with the young boy's impressions of life, now recolored and filtered through the eyes of an adult, and the sudden realizations of what he actually saw and heard of adult conversations which made no sense at the time, but are all too clear now. A reinterpretation of history, in a sense, that allows the context to show more clearly than a simple linear telling might have done. . WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Two aspects stand out as negative factors. First, there is the telling of the story. At the beginning, it seems far too disjointed, and the continuous references to the future to build suspense actually fall flat. Secondly, there is a sense of detachment throughout the story, almost a clinical feel that keeps you removed from the main character and limits the novel to simply "telling" the story rather than having the reader "live" it through the eyes and actions of the characters. The fact that the ending is all too predictable is not necessarily a negative factor in this story, as it doesn't detract from an interesting read into the psyche of a slowly disintegrating family, and there are twists at the end that show the dangers of reinterpreting history from a cracked lens. Not everything happens the way the little grey cells remember, nor the way reality would tend to dictate. . DISCLOSURE: I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow him on social media.

About the author

DIVDIVThomas H. Cook (b. 1947) is the author of nearly two dozen critically lauded crime novels. Born in Fort Payne, Alabama, Cook published his first novel, Blood Innocents, in 1980 while serving as the book review editor of Atlanta magazine. Two years later, on the release of his second novel, The Orchids, he turned to writing full-time./divDIV /divCook published steadily through the 1980s, penning such works as the Frank Clemons trilogy, a series of mysteries starring a jaded cop. He found breakout success with The Chatham School Affair (1996), which won an Edgar Award for best novel. His work has been praised by critics for his attention to psychology and the lyrical nature of his prose. Besides mysteries, Cook has written two true-crime books, Early Graves (1992) and the Edgar-nominated Blood Echoes (1993), as well as several literary novels, including Elena (1986). He lives and works in New York City.
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