Alan Drew

When I read the publicity blurb for this book, it immediately ticked all the boxes for me. Thriller? Excellent. Set in the 1980’s? Cool. Compared to Dennis Lehane? Hand it over.

But….despite an eek-inducing prologue, what we have here is a book that is being marketed to appeal to thriller fans which IMHO does a disservice to the author. This is a beautifully written story about a broken man trying to come to terms with his past. He just happens to be a cop involved in the search for a show more serial killer.

Ben Wade is a former LAPD detective who moved back to his hometown of Rancho Santa Elena in an attempt to save his failing marriage. It didn’t work. He & Rachel divorced but maintain an amicable relationship for the sake of daughter Emma.

Santa Elena is a carefully planned bedroom community designed for those seeking to escape the crime & bustle of Los Angeles. It’s a safe place to raise your family & Ben’s biggest challenges are handling drunks & shop lifters. That’s about to change.

There’s been a series of murders in Orange County with a specific MO & when a woman is found dead in her home in Mission Viejo, it appears the killer has moved into the area. Body #2 confirms their fears & for the first time, Santa Elena’s shocked residents begin to seriously consider locking their doors. Ben & his colleagues are stumped. Their workload gets heavier when the body of a teenager is found in a strawberry field. Despite being an illegal immigrant, the boy was a star swimmer on the local high school team & destined for an athletic scholarship to college.

A handful of short chapters interspersed throughout the book put us inside the mind of the killer. It’s a scary place to be & as he describes scenes from his childhood, we begin to understand how he became a twisted man.

But the vast majority of the book belongs to Ben. Initially, he comes across as a sympathetic character who spends a lot of time thinking about past mistakes & mourning what he’s lost. Instead of making things better, moving back to Santa Elena seems to have had the opposite effect. The added job stress is a catalyst for his increasingly erratic behaviour but it’s not until late in the book that we realize what was always simmering below the surface. As Ben reminisces, we learn of his childhood & how the early death of his father was a turning point. These passages are poignant & atmospheric & you feel for the little boy who remains even as Ben grow into a rebellious teenager who goes on to become a cop. As the story progresses, there are definite parallels between him & the killer. Both are held hostage by their pasts & it makes you ponder how they ended up on opposite sides.

This is not a thriller & that’s no bad thing. It’s a slow burn type of book with a strong sense of time & place, written in fluid & descriptive prose. Maybe the publishers found it difficult to assign a label. For me, it’s more a character driven police procedural. Yes, there are mysteries & it does contain a killer but everything revolves around & serves to develop the MC. So if you’re looking for an edge-of-you-seat kind of read, you may be disappointed. But if you’re in the mood for rich, literary drama you’ll find much to enjoy here. show less

Southern California, 1986. Ben Wade was a former LAPD detective but four years ago, in an attempt to save his failing marriage, he decided to move his family back to his hometown, the supposedly safe, suburb of Santa Elena. Although the move didn’t achieve this aim, he and his ex-wife now maintain a fairly close, amicable relationship as they try to provide their teenage daughter Emma with a sense of security. If he is honest with himself, after working in Los Angeles, Ben is finding his show more job in the suburbs rather boring – dealing with drunks, shoplifters and road-traffic accidents is hardly cutting-edge police work! However, in recent months there have been several killings, all with a similar M.O., in Los Angeles and other locations in the north of Orange County and although, as yet, there has been no official admission that these are the work of a serial killer, most cops are beginning to believe that they probably are.
When a woman is found murdered in a similar way in a suburb just a few miles from Santa Elena, Ben is called in to help with the investigation. Suddenly the threat to his own safe, secure community feels too close for comfort, a threat which becomes even more real when a similar killing soon takes place in his own town. From being a community where people felt safe in their habit of leaving their doors and windows unlocked, it becomes one where terror lurks. The police come under increasing pressure to find the killer, an almost ghost-like person, able to slip in and out of his victims’ homes without being seen. Their workload is increased following the apparent suicide of a teenager, an illegal immigrant, but also a star swimmer on the local high school team. Ben is deeply disturbed by this death and is not convinced that the boy committed suicide. Risking the ire of his boss, he refuses to sign-off on the case and continues to investigate. This is a decision which will prove to have a profound emotional effect on him as he is forced to confront painful memories.
Although this is a crime story, and the tension surrounding tracking down a serial killer permeates the story, its real strength lies in the author’s impressive character development and the convincing psychological underpinning which explores the backgrounds and motivations of the main characters. The gradual exposure of childhood traumas and long-held secrets is central to the developing story and demonstrates that, in one way or another, unresolved feelings can continue to define how people live their lives.
Both Ben and the killer are burdened by secrets from the past and each, albeit in very different ways, has developed dysfunctional behaviour patterns as a way of dealing with emotional pain. For Ben this shows mainly in his inability to make close, intimate relationships with the women in his life. Although he cares deeply for his ex-wife and daughter, he isn’t always able to either fully recognise, understand or meet their emotional needs. He also struggles with his developing relationship with Natasha, a forensic specialist with whom he works. Although I understood why he couldn’t allow himself to get too close to her, I still found myself wanting to shake him because she is such a lovely, caring character! Not only is she clearly attracted to Ben, but her respect and kindness for the dead victims demonstrated a very humane approach to her distressing and disturbing job. The key to the killer’s childhood traumas and his turning to violence as a way of trying to resolve them, lies in occasional chapters which describe, in chilling detail, his background and his gradual social and psychological disintegration. The examination, through these two main characters, of why one traumatised person can live a socially acceptable life whilst another becomes a psychopathic killer, was one of the factors which made this such a satisfying story to read.
Another thread in the story focused on the fact that even in apparently middle-class, affluent small communities there can be dark secrets, secrets which remain unexposed for a variety of reasons, often the result of a self-protective conspiracy of silence. I thought that the gradual exposure of this dark underbelly was very convincingly and sensitively portrayed, especially in the way that it demonstrated how people in authority can wield such power over their vulnerable victims.
Throughout the story I was drawn into the author’s evocative descriptions of the dramatic and beautiful countryside of Orange County. His descriptions of the trails through remote, mountainous scenery made me feel as though I too was struggling to track down a killer who was familiar with every twist and turn of the paths. He also captured, through Ben’s reflections about some of the unwelcome changes in his hometown, the ways in which unsympathetic development can destroy the very landscape to which people had been attracted in the first place.
If you are looking for an “edge of your seat” thriller, this story would probably be a bit disappointing. However, if you enjoy a character-driven, well-paced and totally absorbing read; if you enjoy beautifully written, creative prose, then this book should tick all the boxes for you. I find myself hoping that Alan Drew is going to write a sequel so that I can revisit the memorable characters he has created. show less

An earthquake in Turkey displaces two families who lived in the same apartment building, connecting them forever at that moment in time, yet creating an unbridgeable distance between them. In a sense, both families were already displaced when the earthquake hit. Sinan Basioglu and his family are Kurds living outside the Kurdish homeland, while Marcus Hamm and his family are Americans affiliated with an American missionary school.

The teenage romance between Sinan's daughter, Irem, and show more Marcus's son, Dylan, is predictably tragic. The Hamm family's effect on Sinan's young son, Ismail, is more surprising. Points of tension include Muslim and Christian, fundamentalist and moderate, East-West/Europe-Asia, American worldview vs. Middle Eastern worldview, parents and children, male and female. This novel illuminates cultural divides without imagining resolutions for them. show less

This book started off so well. I love historical, and cultural fiction. This story immerses us in Turkey within the life of a Kurdish Muslim family and their American neighbors. I liked the romance between Irem and Dylan and how she struggled with her Muslin beliefs and her desire to be more freedom in the male-dominated Muslim social/cultural system.

The earthquake hits, and everyone's life is turned upside down. However, it gives Irem some more freedom, and she takes the chance to enjoy show more this silver lining amidst the chaos and turmoil of her family's near-homelessness. She still struggles, of course, not just with herself, but her parents, especially her mother, who frankly, comes off at times as something that rhymes with 'witch'.

I found myself appalled and tuned off by the ending. For a story that I was enjoying so much with its descriptions of life in a different land as well as coping with a earthquake and the aftermath of it, the ending was like driving a car head-on into a wall. I didn't expect the ending to be all lovey-happy-dappy, but Dylan intoxicated Irem with alcohol and then raped her, and then she killed herself. I mean, wtf? When she comes back to her parents crying about being raped, her mother coldly turns her away, and her father actually contemplated killing her! I was hoping for some sort of solution that while not perfect, was workable, and instead all i got was this. The only reason I didn't give this book just one star was because the writing/prose itself is good. show less