Dominance

( 15 )
Pick Up In Store

Pick Up in Store

Reserve and pick up in 60 minutes at your local store

Hardcover
$16.87
BN.com price
$25.00 List Price (Save 33%)
Marketplace (New and Used)
from
$0.01
$25.00 List Price (Save 100%)
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
All (76)  
Used (45)  
New (31)  
Close
Sort by
Page 1 of 8
Showing 1 – 10 of 76 (8 pages)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
Better World Books
Seller since 2006

Feedback rating:

(50880)

Condition:

New — never opened or used in original packaging.

Like New — packaging may have been opened. A "Like New" item is suitable to give as a gift.

Very Good — may have minor signs of wear on packaging but item works perfectly and has no damage.

Good — item is in good condition but packaging may have signs of shelf wear/aging or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Acceptable — item is in working order but may show signs of wear such as scratches or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Used — An item that has been opened and may show signs of wear. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Refurbished — A used item that has been renewed or updated and verified to be in proper working condition. Not necessarily completed by the original manufacturer.

Like New
Book in almost Brand New condition. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!

Ships from: Mishawaka, IN

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
Better World Books
Seller since 2006

Feedback rating:

(50880)

Condition: Very Good
Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!

Ships from: Mishawaka, IN

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
OwlsBooks-TRM
Seller since 2009

Feedback rating:

(22563)

Condition: Good
Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!

Ships from: Lakewood, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
GreatBuyBooks-WA
Seller since 2009

Feedback rating:

(18248)

Condition: Good
Buy from the best: 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship today!

Ships from: Lakewood, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
Discover Books Ltd.
Seller since 2006

Feedback rating:

(3584)

Condition: Good
Some wear on book from reading, some spine creases, wear on binding and pages, we guarantee all purchases and ship all items via USPS mail.

Ships from: Sumas, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
BOOKSANDALL
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(180)

Condition: Good
1451617291 BM6224

Ships from: philadelphia, PA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
BOOKSANDALL
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(180)

Condition: Acceptable
1451617291 BM6308

Ships from: philadelphia, PA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.05
(Save 100%)
Aeden Stclair
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(555)

Condition: Good
FORMER LIBRARY. Usual markings. Normal wear.

Ships from: Marietta, OH

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
$0.99
(Save 96%)
Bookmax
Seller since 2011

Feedback rating:

(92)

Condition: Acceptable
Hardcover Fair 1451617291 BA.

Ships from: Chalfont, PA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.99
(Save 96%)
BookHouse COM LLC
Seller since 2011

Feedback rating:

(316)

Condition: Like New
Hardcover Fine 1451617291 May have a remainder mark FROM A COMPANY YOU TRUST, HUGE SELECTION. RELIABLE CUSTOMER SERVICE! ! HASSLE FREE RETURN POLICY, SATISFACTION GURANTEED****

Ships from: Philadelphia, PA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
Page 1 of 8
Showing 1 – 10 of 76 (8 pages)
Close
Sort by
NOOK Book (eBook)
$11.99
BN.com price

Available on NOOK devices and apps

  • Nook Devices
  • NOOK
  • NOOK Color
  • NOOK Tablet
  • Tablet/Phone
  • NOOK for iPad
  • NOOK for iPhone
  • NOOK for Android
  • NOOK for Android (Tablet)
  • NOOK Kids for iPad
  • PC/Mac
  • NOOK Study
  • NOOK for PC
  • NOOK for Mac

Want a NOOK? Explore Now

More About This Book

Overview

THE PROCEDURE HAS BEGUN . . .

Fifteen years earlier. Jasper College is buzzing with the news that famed literature professor Richard Aldiss will be teaching a special night class called Unraveling a Literary Mystery—from a video feed in his prison cell. In 1982, Aldiss was convicted of the murders of two female grad students; the women were killed with axe blows and their bodies decorated with the novels of notoriously reclusive author Paul Fallows. Even the most obsessive Fallows scholars have never seen him. He is like a ghost. Aldiss entreats the students of his night class to solve the Fallows riddle once and for all. The author’s two published novels, The Coil and The Golden Silence, are considered maps to finding Fallows’s true identity. And the only way in is to master them through a game called the Procedure. You may not know when the game has begun, but when you receive an invitation to play, it is an invitation to join the elite ranks of Fallows scholars. Failure, in these circles, is a fate worse than death. Soon, members of the night class will be invited to play along . . .

Present day. Harvard professor Alex Shipley made her name as a member of Aldiss’s night class. She not only exposed the truth of Paul Fallows’s identity, but in the process uncovered information that acquitted Aldiss of the heinous 1982 crimes. But when one of her fellow night class alums is murdered— the body chopped up with an axe and surrounded by Fallows novels—can she use what she knows about Fallows and the Procedure to stop a killer before each of her former classmates is picked off, one by one?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
A college campus, as it did in Lavender's debut, Obedience, provides the backdrop for the author's taut second stand-alone. In 1994, as an undergrad at Vermont's Jasper College, Alex Shipley was part of a controversial night class, Unraveling a Literary Mystery, taught from prison by literature professor Richard Aldiss, who was serving a life sentence for murdering two female grad students 12 years before. The class's mission: to learn the identity of reclusive author Paul Fallows, whose two novels were clues to his identity and were best understood by playing a game called the Procedure. Alex's investigation not only uncovered Fallows's identity and a masterful literary hoax but also exonerated Aldiss of the murders. Now a Harvard professor, Alex returns to Jasper after her classmates in Unraveling a Literary Mystery start turning up murdered, their bodies arranged the same way the two grad students were. Full-bodied characters, an effective gothic atmosphere, and a deliciously creepy, unpredictable finale will please fans of academic thrillers. (July)
Kirkus Reviews

Lavender (Obedience, 2008) takes on another puzzle-within-a-thriller, also set on a college campus.

Dr. Alex Shipley was a member of a special class of nine hand-picked students chosen for a night course taught by a former professor and convicted murderer, Dr. Richard Aldiss. Aldiss, who has made the study of the reclusive author Paul Fallows his life's work, stands convicted of killing two graduate students. He's set to teach the class from prison, under the watchful eyes of his guards. Naturally, it's no ordinary class: Aldiss has sprinkled clues throughout the course, hoping to lead one student on a journey; in this case, it's the beautiful Alex. She was spectacularly successful. Not only did she unlock Aldiss' puzzle and help him win acquittal, but now Alex has returned to Jasper College to solve the death of a former classmate whose murder is a disturbing replica of the grad students' deaths. When the remainder of the nine still living come together in a spooky mansion replete with a dean who likes to wear makeup, it is soon clear that there are strange things going bump in the night. With more bodies turning up, Alex finds that the killer's true intention may be more personal than she might have ever imagined. The story is twisty and turny, with all kinds of side roads, but it's mostlyThe Big Chillwithout the humor or sympathetic characters. The premise of the class, the police's fawning reliance on a professor to solve their case, the mystery of exactly who Fallows might really be and the cast of weird characters come together in a story that often calls for the reader to suspend all rational thought. With action that veers from the original Aldiss class to the present and back, Lavender manages to maintain the novel's taut, sinister atmosphere from the first page to the last. But in the end, the story is unsettling, unsatisfying and unbelievable.

Readers who loved Lavender's first book will doubtless delight in this one, while those who did not will find his latest extremely tough reading.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781451617290
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Publication date: 7/5/2011
  • Pages: 368
  • Sales rank: 425,339
  • Product dimensions: 6.16 (w) x 9.24 (h) x 1.08 (d)

Meet the Author

WILL LAVENDER is the author of two previous novels, Obedience (which was a New York Times and international bestseller and was translated into fourteen languages) and Dominance. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Read an Excerpt

1

Just after dark they rolled in the television where the murderer would appear. It was placed at the front of the lecture hall, slightly off center so the students in back could see. Two men wearing maintenance uniforms checked the satellite feed and the microphones, then disappeared as silently as they had come. It was now five minutes before the class was to begin, and everything was ready.

This was the first class of its kind, and its novelty—or perhaps its mystery—made it the most talked-about ever offered at tiny Jasper College. As mandated by the school president, there were nine students in the classroom. They were the best of the best in the undergrad literature program at Jasper. Now, on the first night of the semester, they waited anxiously for their professor to emerge on the screen.

The class was LIT 424: Unraveling a Literary Mystery. It had been offered at night because this was the only viable time, the only hour when the warden would allow the murderer free to teach. He would teach, if you believed the rumors, from a padded cell. Others said he would be in front of a greenscreen, with special effects to replicate a lectern before him—an illusion of a classroom. The rest claimed he would simply be shackled to his chair in an orange jumpsuit because state law prohibited anything else. They had to remember what this man had done, these people said. They had to remember who he was.

The room was warm with the closeness of bodies. The chalkboard seemed to glisten, even though the Vermont night outside was bitterly cold. The quads were mostly silent, save for the protesters who stood the stipulated two hundred yards from Culver Hall, where the night class would be held. The class met in the basement of Culver for this reason: the powers-that-be at Jasper did not want the protesters to be able to see what was happening on that TV screen.

The few students who were out at that cold hour witnessed the nervous candlelight of the protest vigil from a distance, through the copse of beech and oak that dotted the woodsy campus. A light snow fell, flakes rushing upward in the January wind like motes of dust. Not far away, Lake Champlain purred in the wind. It was as if, one freshman said as he looked down at the scene from a high dormitory window, someone were about to be executed.

Just beyond the protesters, in a building that was dark save for a few bottom-floor lights, a pair of state policemen sat in a room the size of a broom closet, drinking coffee and watching their own blank feed on a tiny screen.

Unraveling a Literary Mystery—this too had been contested. The president of the college chose the title because it sounded to him fitting for what the professor had in mind. But in fact the president did not know exactly what the class would entail. He could not know; the murderer had only hinted at a “literary game” his students would play in the class. About his syllabus he had spoken to no one.

It was this inability to even guess at what was about to happen that silenced the classroom now. In the weeks before the semester had begun, when they went home to their families on Christmas break, the students who had registered for LIT 424 had time to think. To weigh their decision to take this strange course. They wondered if something could go wrong in that lecture hall, if their professor could somehow . . . it sounded crazy, yes. Most of them did not say it aloud, or if they did, they spoke only to their roommates or their closest friends. Slight whispers, torn away by the wind, carried off into nothingness.

If he could somehow get out.

This was what they were thinking in those final seconds. Some of them talked about their other classes that semester, flipped through textbooks and highlighted paragraphs in trembling arcs of yellow. But mostly they sat, saying nothing. They stared at the dead television screen. They wondered, and they waited.

Finally the television went to a deeper black, and everyone sat up straight. Then the box began to hum, an electrical, nodish oohing, a kind of flatline that moved left to right across the room. Their professor—the MacArthur-winning genius, once a shining star at nearby Dumant University and the closest thing to celebrity a professor of literature could possibly be, the same man who had viciously murdered two graduate students twelve years before—was ready to appear.

Then the blackness dissolved and the noise died away and the professor’s face came to them on the screen. They had seen pictures of him, many of them preserved in yellowed newsprint. There were images of the man in a dark suit (at his trial), or with his wrists shackled and smiling wolfishly (moments after the verdict), or with his hair swept back, wearing a tweed jacket and a bow tie (his faculty photograph at Dumant in 1980).

Those photographs did not prepare the students for the man on the screen. This man’s face was harder, its lines deeper. He was in fact wearing a simple orange jumpsuit, the number that identified him barely hidden beneath the bottom edge of the screen. The V of his collar dipped low to reveal the curved edge of a faded tattoo just over his heart. Although the students did not yet know this, the tattoo was of the thumb-shaped edge of a jigsaw puzzle piece.

The professor’s eyes seemed to pulse. Sharp, flinty eyes that betrayed a kind of dangerous intelligence. The second the students saw him there was a feeling not of surprise, not of cold shock, but rather of This, then. This is who he is. One girl sitting toward the back whispered, “God, I didn’t know he was so . . .” And then another girl, a friend sitting close by, finished, “Sexy.” The two students laughed, but quietly. Quietly.

Now the professor sat forward. In the background the students could see his two prison guards, could make out everything but their faces—the legs of their dark slacks, the flash of their belt buckles, and the leathery batons they carried in holsters. One of them stood with legs spread wide and the other was more rigid, but otherwise they mirrored each other. The professor himself was not behind a pane of glass; the camera that was trained on him was not shielded in any way. He simply sat at a small table, his uncuffed hands before him, his breathing slow and natural. His face bore the slightest hint of a smile.

“Hello,” he said softly. “My name is Richard Aldiss, and I will be your professor for Unraveling a Literary Mystery. Speak so I can hear you.”

“Hello, Professor,” someone said.

“We’re here,” said another.

Aldiss leaned toward a microphone that must have been just out of the camera’s view. He nodded and said, “Very good. I can hear you and you can hear me. I can see you and you can see me. Now, let us begin.”

© 2011 Will Lavender

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 15 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(3)

4 Star

(7)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(1)

1 Star

(4)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines
Add Recommendations
Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

  • - HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
  • - Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
  • - Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
  • - Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
  • - Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
  • - Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
  • - Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

  • - By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
  • - Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
  • - See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.
Search for Products You'd Like to Recommend

Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

Create a Pen Name

Your Pen Name is your unique identiy on BN.com. It will appear on the reviews you write and other website activities. Your Pen Name cannot be edited, changed or deleted once submitted.

Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

We're sorry, but penname is already taken.

Please select one of the following:
Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

penname is available!

By visiting the BN.com website or marking a purchase on BN.com, a User is deemed to have accepted the Terms of Use.

Continue Anonymously

Welcome, penname

You have successfully created your Pen Name. Start enjoying the benefits of the BN.com Community today.

Sort by: Showing all of 15 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 9, 2012

    Great Thriller

    I really enjoyed the dual-time stories and the idea of the "procedure". Richard Aldiss'character is creepy.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted August 18, 2011

    Dont waste your time

    One dimensional characters, sloppy writing, cannot understand why the NYtimes gave this a good review.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted August 12, 2011

    Wow!!!

    I would imagine this book is considered a literary masterpice....by it's author & total drivel by most everyone else.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted August 1, 2011

    dominance, will lavender

    "Dominance" by Will Lavender follows the alumnis of a former night class taught by jailed professor Richard Aldiss-formerly convicted of murdering two female students, and in 1994 teaching a class dedicated to discovering the identity of enigmatic author Fallows. The book's premise alternates between the class of 1994, and present day when one of the grads of the class is murdered and Richard Aldiss tells the book's protagonist, Alex Shipley-another grad of that infamous night class, that the murderer is someone from that class.

    Events switch back and forth between 1994 and present day. Back in 1994, Alex is told by the college's dean that he believes Aldiss is innocent of the murders, and the only thing that can prove his innocence is the discovery of the true identity of Fallows-whom their night class is dedicated to, and who might have been the true murderer.

    In the present day, former members of the night class are invited by the dean to attend the memorial of their killed classmate. But soon enough, they start getting murdered as well. All clues point to yet another Fallows connection, a sort of copycat murders. But this time, Alex is no longer sure of herself. Was Aldiss, the man to point to the connection between the current murders, ever truly innocent? Who was Fallows? And if someone involved in the night class is behind the murders, whom can she trust?

    Overall, the book has an interesting format-alternating between two mysteries, one set in 1994 and one set in the present day. I thought the structure was creative and kept my interest in the story. The ending is pretty unpredictable, as things finish out on a cliff-hanger note and the reader is left to wonder about the fate of Alex Shipley.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted July 17, 2011

    Fun read that holds your interest to the end

    Lavender's style relies upon dialogue and action to define his characters, no deep introspections for pages and pages here. He takes control on page one, gets you going and doesn't let you stop until the end.

    I wasn't sure what to expect within Lavender's story, some flashback or dual time style books can be hard to follow or a challenge the author isn't up to; not so for Lavender. The dual times only add to the suspense and suspicion, keeping the reader guessing until the end when the ride comes to a quick stop. But not the story.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted July 12, 2011

    Waste of ten bucks

    The plot develops too slowly and the charactets are one dimensional. I understand the author's intent to unveil the mysteries slowly, but by 100 pages in I found I couldn't care less what "the procedure" was or what happened to the characters, even the protagonist. Interesting premise, missed opportunity.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted July 2, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    exciting whodunit

    In 1994 in Vermont, Jasper College hires literature Professor Richard Aldiss to teach an undergraduate class Unraveling a Literary Mystery. Using closed circuit TV Aldiss will conduct the class from his prison cell where he serves two life sentences for murdering two female grad students twelve years ago. Aldiss assigns his student with identifying who reclusive author Paul Fallows is. Fallows has written two novels containing clues to who he is, but to achieve a chance at success means understanding the game Procedure. One of the students Alex Shipley not only achieves the objective, she proves her incarcerated professor could not have killed the students.

    Several years later someone kills one of the nine students who participated in Unraveling a Literary Mystery using the same M.O. as the homicides that placed Aldiss in prison. Harvard Professor Alex returns to Jasper to investigate who the murderer is.

    Rotating between 1994 and the present and enhanced by references to the 1980s homicides, readers will enjoy this suspense thriller. The cast is especially solid with obviously the leads being the game playing enigmatic Aldiss and the genius Shipley. However, a critical late revelation about Aldiss seems inane for such a brilliant mind though emphasizing the gamester personality but to me detracts from an otherwise exciting whodunit then and now.

    Harriet Klausner

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted June 29, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Terrifically Intense Thriller

    I'm so happy to be done reading this book. Now maybe I can get a decent night's sleep.

    Wil Lavender's "Dominance" is smart, dark, intense and deeply moody. This thrilling murder mystery is part "Silence of the Lambs", and part Agatha Christie and is driven by Lavender's slow and purposeful development of characters and clues and revelations around key plot points.

    Lavender bounces the reader between past and present building up the mysteries and tensions surrounding a 20-year old pair of murders and a recent murder that brings former college classmates together for a macabre reunion.

    Both past and present mysteries revolve around former professor and convict Richard Aldiss. This very Hannibal Lecter-like character continually dances along the fine line of being good and evil as he helps guide his students to first finding the truth behind the murders he was accused of over 20 years ago, and then the more recent murder of their classmate. 20 years ago, the top 9 students in the Literature program at a small Vermont college take a course that promises to unravel the mystery of who novelist Paul Fallows really is. It's taught by Aldiss via closed circuit TV under heavy guard from his prison cell.

    Lavender does a masterful job at building and connecting multiple mysteries while teasing the details and leaving the reader salivating for more. The interactions between Aldiss and his students, particularly Alex Shipley, will evoke memories of Lecter and his "student" Clarice Starling. Aldiss is extremely smart, deep and bizarre and has a way of pulling all of those around him into his own cult of personality.

    Some of Lavender's clues are a bit clunky. Some of the dialogue feels too forced. The conclusions left me a bit disappointed, but any book that keeps me up late riveted and excited for more while keeping me more focused on every shadow and creak in my house than on getting a good night's sleep, will get a high recommendation from me.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted June 15, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Definitely a different kind of mystery/thriller novel!

    "What if you could read a book and treat it as a competition between you and its author?" - Alex Shipley, Chapter 3. That is pretty much how I tackle anything from the mystery/thriller genre, whether it be a TV show, a movie, or in this case. a book. Will Lavender is an author of what he calls "puzzle thrillers," novels that are not quite mysteries and not quite thrillers but incorporate elements of both, and I have never read anything like it. Like most of you, I enjoy a good mystery book. I love the challenge it posts in the beginning, the chase, the way it all unfolds in the end. My book-love started with those Nancy Drew Mysteries collections. As a kid, I ate all of it up. But after a while, it begins to look the same. Someone gets killed, there are clues left behind, the villain taunts the heroes, the villain gets caught. Over and over. And sometimes, it builds and builds only to an ending that is less than satisfying. This book breaks through all that. The book jumps right into it; setting up the premise that will last the whole book. Our hero, Dr. Alexandra "Alex" Shipley, was a part of an elite experimental class in Jasper College, Vermont in 1994. This class was being taught by a jailed professor named Dr. Richard Adliss, convicted of brutally murdering 2 grad students. The crime scenes were littered with the books of the author Paul Fallows. Who is this elusive Paul Fallows? Richard Adliss then shows his class of 9 students how to answer that question. Fast forward to "Present Day". Alex is now a professor at Harvard. She is famous in the literary world as the one who found out about Fallows' true identity. In the process, she also acquitted Adliss of all charges against him. But then, one of her former classmates gets killed in the same way as the grad students' murders. She then uses the skills Adliss taught them to solve this mystery. The book bounces back and forth between 1994 and present day. Normally, I get turned off by this storytelling device but Lavender showed excellent use of flashbacks. It kept me on my toes, guessing at every turn of the page. Both past and present settings are equally exciting. I love that both settings move forward rather the present the only one progressing and the flashbacks are just random points in the past. Parallel time lines, I enjoyed. Also, I liked the cast of characters. Some are a little bit cliche but the focus is very heavy on the main characters that I did not mind the minor ones that much. It is definitely one of the most frustrating books that I have read in a while. When reading mystery novels, I usually solve the puzzle somewhere midway through the story. Some authors just make it too obvious. But this one? Oh boy. I had suspicions but I was never 100% sure until it was officially revealed. The plot was airtight and solid. The flashbacks are very essential to the present day storyline as if it answers the questions of the present. Recommendation: If you're tired of your usual mystery/thriller novels and looking for something different, pick this one up. This is definitely something new. I read it and treated it like a competition between me and the author and guess what, Will Lavender won.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 11, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted September 6, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 26, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 8, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted August 10, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 14, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

Sort by: Showing all of 15 Customer Reviews
If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble
Why is this product inappropriate?
Comments (optional)
500 character limit