Saturday 20 October 2012

CRIME FICTION REVIEW: The Crime of Julian Wells - Thomas H Cook

Release Date: 01/10/12

SYNOPSIS:

Julian Wells was a writer of dark non-fiction works that detailed some of the worst crimes of the 20th Century. Was it this exploration of man's inhumanity to man that caused him to take his own life? When his body is found in a boat drifting in a pond in Montauk, New York, his best friend, the literary critic Philip Anders, begins to reread his work in order to prepare a eulogy. This rereading, along with other clues, convinces the critic that his friend has committed a terrible crime, and that it was as punishment for this crime that Wells took his own life. Anders' investigation sparks an obsession with unravelling the mystery of the man he thought he knew. His journey towards understanding leads him from Paris to Budapest, spans four decades, and takes him deeper and deeper in to the heart of darkness that was Julian Wells...


REVIEW:

To be honest with you, I found this book quite hard going, as its something that requires the readers attention throughout and whilst it is beautifully written, I did find that with some of the repetitive descriptions in regard to the principle character I lost my chain of thought and missed some of the key parts due to my distraction.

Don’t get me wrong it has a wonderful sense of pace, some cracking turns of phrase but when I get distracted when I’m trying to read that really doesn’t bode well for the book staying with me or for me to get the pay off. All in a reasonable book and one I will try to reread in the future to see if it was just a case of being in the wrong frame of mind upon the original reading. I can wait but see.



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