I’m an avid reader of crime novels and international
thrillers, which is a significant difference from being a writer of such books,
so I approach this review with some caution and a mountain of respect. The
20-volume Stephen White series about protagonist Alan Gregory has been a good
volume of work, sometimes allowing White to slip into my power rotation of
authors and other times remaining on the cusp of being there. We at Men Reading
Books have read all of his stories, and have reviewed about half of them. As
noted in my last review, his characters have been fully fleshed out, and White
apparently agrees since he’s announced this is the penultimate novel in the
series.
What you do to bring such a long body of stories to a
fitting conclusion? What would you do to try to be fair to your beloved
characters and tie together so many story lines that have been evolving in
progressively more complex directions? That certainly seemed to be the intent
of the author with this book. As usual, White’s writing was strongest and most
compelling as he wrote about doctor-patient relationships between
psychotherapist and client, transference and countertransference issues in
ethically-challenging circumstances. Gregory was weakest in trying to pull
together so many plot lines in too neat a package.
This is far from being a stand-alone novel. One would not
pick this book up as the first in the series. Rather, you should only dive into
this book if you are intimately familiar with the gradual character development
over the last 15 years. I was still pretty hooked on the story until about the
75% part, and then the believability factor simply went away at the same time
the complexity of the plot expanded. Furthermore, the resolution was not a
surprise.
I’m so disappointed that I’m not motivated to quickly pick
up the final book in the series, and I know that those of us who have been
steady fans is exactly who White is writing for. Maybe I’ll get there, but my
queue of waiting books will have to get pretty thin to make me pick up that
last Alan Gregory novel.
I'm in agreement with most of what you say here. White was a favorite of mine early on but I thought his writing suffered in the mid 2000's. I continued reading for old times sake on the hopes he would revert to the standards of his earlier work. In his last two novels I thought he did that. Don't miss the final installment.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I think he should now write a travel book for the Boulder area. He clearly loves the place and can never let you forget it.