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5.0étoiles sur 5
Quiet but powerful, Mai 24 2004
Par Un client
This book is breathtaking. It is a quiet mystery - no car chases, captures, narrow escapes, etc, but the writing is beautiful and lyrical, and the mystery is powerful - the author deftly weaves the horrible events from Graves' childhood with the mystery he is exploring, and fills the book with intriguing suspects, twists and turns, and surprises. Underneath this is a powerful thread - Graves' guilt, which both destroyed his life and allowed his success as a writer, and the horrors of the Nazis, which crept into the quiet world of Ravenwood. ***WARNING - SPOILER AHEAD*** Graves tears at the reader's heart - he was a good, hardworking teenager who was confronted with horrors that were too large for him to handle and made a choice based upon these, but he cannot see that as a teenager he was not to blame for the choices, and should not carry a lifetime of guilt for them. At first I was very angry about the ending, but when I reread it carefully I realized I misunderstood it, and the ending is actually perfect - a chance for Graves' redemption and forgiveness. Overall, this book is dark and very moving.
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1.0étoiles sur 5
Tedious and lurid, Déc 8 2003
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.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
Perfect Book for Mystery Lovers!, Oct. 24 2001
I really enjoyed reading Cook's Instruments of Night. I, being the mystery reader I am, thought that this book posessed all of the qualities a good mystery book should have. Suspense, horror, chills, good detective work, etc. The twists and turns in this book were unbelieveable! It seemed like once you had gotten your mind set on one thing, another thing would present itself, changing your whole perspective. The ending was amazing finding out who Sykes was and how Faye really died. This was the first book that I read of Cook's and will definitely not be my last.
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