Mortal Memory
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4.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Cook's 11th novel (among them Edgar nominees Blood Innocents and Sacrificial Ground ), the violence is all in the past (save for a car crash) but the level of terror is daunting. Fortyish narrator Steve Farris is an architect who lives with his wife and son in the suburbs. For him architecture ``is a world which has no room for chance,'' but one that changes drastically when he is contacted by Rebecca Soltero, who wants to interview him for a book she's writing about men who murdered their families. For in 1959 Steve's father fatally shotgunned his wife and their teenage daughter and son, then vanished. Nine-year-old Stevie, desperately missing his gifted 16-year-old sister, managed to block out all thoughts about the deaths. Now Rebecca lures him into talking, and he is forced to acknowledge the questions that have haunted his subconscious mind: Did his father mean to kill him, too? What secret did his father and his sister share? The novel keeps shifting back and forth in time, from the present to ``that last year'' to the years before Steve's birth to the immediate aftermath of the deaths, but always comes back to the horrible deed--the excruciating how and the unanswerable why. The deceptively simple writing is harrowing as Steve allows his mind to probe more deeply, examining remembered looks, words and nuances. Terror builds and the ending to this chilling study in psychological suspense is a dizzying jolt.
Customer Reviews
Very long
Very long story that explains everything in the last two pages. Wasn’t worth it.