A Field of Darkness [Audio CD]

Cornelia Read's debut novel tells of a cynical, hard-bitten woman as she takes an interest in the fates of two generation-old, brutal, unsolved murders. The story is well set, flows nicely and parcels out clues and red herrings at the right pace. And thank the gods she didn't try to run a couple dozen subplots--this is a focused story.

What I liked best, though, was Read's writing style. You know how sometimes there's an author whose turn of phrase you just like--who could make a grocery list interesting? That is what struck me here. They say that an author's work is to put into words what most need to say but lack the phrasing. At this art--and it is a rare one in an era of plodding writing--Read is simply outstanding, a tremendously incisive chooser of the right metaphor. I found myself most interested to see what she'd come up with next.

The other area that impressed me most was character development. The protagonist's oft-disappointed humanity breathes and has a pulse. Read juggles quite a few characters and does them well. Interestingly, if there was a single child in the book (save reminisces by adults), I don't remember him or her. I sense that this was deliberate but I haven't figured out why--could be anything from puckish playfulness to an atmosphere-setter. Could be the author, a mother of twins, had strong personal reservations about children in a setting where violent murders occur.

The mystery/crime novel folks will like Read, but her style and skill will reel in a much broader audience. Me, for example.

< I feel like a freakin' prude reading this book, all disturbed by the lack of formal prose. Seriously - feeling like I need to suck back a cold one just to make it through the oh-so can you believe the fact that I'm, like, breaking the rules of social norms and writing all free and stuff? >

Imagine reading an entire book written like the above paragraph. See, I can do it too! And I'm not a self-proclaimed WASP or a hippy or a writer or anything!

I'm baffled Cornelia Read received praise for using such an "authentic voice." At its bare bones, it comes down to too many contractions, distracting fragments peppered across each page, sloppy "hip" (ha!) language like "...he harshes out on whoever's available" and "...but I was late for work and started to get pissy," and descriptions that begin with the word "all" (ex. "It was all creamy stucco and white..." and "its potato-potato idle all basso profundo in the predawn quiet."). I can't count how many times I rolled my eyes while reading this book - frankly, I found Read's "dazzling new voice" and "knife-like wit" tedious at best and irritating at worst.

Despite the above, I will be curious to see Read's next book. I'd like to know whether A Field of Darkness in really written in the protagonist's 1st person voice or whether this is simply Read's writing style. If it's the former case, Read went overboard; and if its the latter, I think it reflects an inexperienced writer trying to astonish the literary world with her rule-breaking prose. Yawn. It's been done.

Another reviewer said it quite well - 'It's a self-indulgent book, with clanging overtones of "clever me," and a lack of tension that makes the entire effort rather flabby.'

A FIELD OF DARKNESS starts, quite literally, like a house afire. The house that catches on fire --- burned down for the insurance money --- is in Syracuse. So is heroine Madeline Dare, and the house may be in better shape. Madeline is 25, a refugee from the Old Money, Eastern Socially Attractive world of the Hamptons and the Great Camps of the Adirondacks. (Perhaps the most cutting insult Madeline gets in the course of the book is a reminder from a frosty relative that she won't be allowed to buy back her parents' share in the family campground.)

So instead of summers by the lake replete with Southside cocktails (gin, lemon and syrup with a mint garnish) and winters spent indoors contemplating Winslow Homer originals and the crimes of one's forefathers, Madeline ends up in upstate New York, working for the local paper, writing about "winter drinks," green bean casserole recipes, and the wonders of the midway at the 1988 New York State Fair. You hear about culture shock, as poor Madeline experiences cultural cardiac arrest.

But Madeline (who reminds us that Syracuse is in the top four in the country in Cool Whip consumption) is not the first of her tribe to make the trip upstate from the Hamptons; her cousin Lapthorne was there years before, as a soldier at Camp Drum in the late sixties. He was there, as it turns out, at the same time as the famous murder of the unnamed, enigmatic "Rose Girls," left stark and alone in a cornfield garlanded in red and white flowers. And it turns out that one of Madeline's rustic in-laws has found Lapthorne's dog tags while plowing that very field.

That's the mystery at the center of A FIELD OF DARKNESS, and it has a lot to recommend --- tragedy, beauty, the relentless passage of time, the complete lack of motive for the killings. Madeline, wisely, doesn't want any part of it. But her curiosity overcomes her (understandable) reluctance, and before too long she's poring over the old photographs of the crime scene in the newspaper morgue, interviewing witnesses and getting in over her head. In many ways, Madeline is the worst possible detective for this --- or any other --- case. She's nervous and depressive, with a knack for saying precisely the wrong thing to the wrong person. But her great gift is her undeniable talent for observation, which gets more acute when she's in a horrible environment or situation.

Of course, it's a talent that rightly belongs to author Cornelia Read, and in her first novel she shows herself to be a sharp, caustic observer of crime scenes and purely social disasters. Read has an unerring eye for the false and the ridiculous, and both the barrooms of upstate New York and the drawing rooms of Long Island make for rich, ripe targets. She switches between them with aplomb, capable of describing both Low Rent entertainments (where a character named "Vomit Girl" makes a memorable appearance) as well as those of High Society (one key character enters a scene aboard his yacht). In between, Read populates her tale with memorable, quirky supporting characters, including a frightened silhouette artist, a cattle auctioneer with a fortunetelling sideline, and Jerry Lee Lewis as his own bad self.

A FIELD OF DARKNESS is sheer joy, complete with cutting prose and gleefully off-kilter pop culture references. Read pulls off the difficult job of combining perfectly timed comic situations and observations with a murder mystery that's deeply weird and disturbing. She writes with assurance, flash, and more than her fair share of talent. Just like her book, Cornelia Read is starting out her career as a novelist like a house afire.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who writes the "Northbound" blog at [...].