The Crime of Julian Wells

by Thomas H. Cook Narrated by Traber Burns

Overview

When the body of famed true-crime writer Julian Wells is found in a boat drifting on a Montauk pond, the question isn't how he died, but why. The death looks like an obvious suicide, but why would Wells take his own life? And was this his only crime? Wells' best friend, Philip Anders, wants to know more. His first clue is an Argentinean crime, which may have been Wells' last book idea. As Anders gathers the missing parts of Wells' life, the man he knew-or thought he knew-becomes increasingly obscured, and the ever-deepening puzzle threatens to consume him entirely.

A mystery of identity, or assumed identity, The Crime of Julian Wells spans four decades and traverses three continents. Richly plotted, brilliantly told, it's a voyage into the depth and darkness of a man's heart.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A striking example of a suspense writer working at the top of his form." —Los Angeles Times

"[A]n intelligent and elegant work." —The Wall Street Journal

BookPage

Reader Traber Burns’s mature voice is a perfect match for Philip, and he makes the most of the material.”
—Library Journal

Los Angeles Times

[Cook] knows how to spin a seductive tale.”
—Booklist

Booklist

[Cook] knows how to spin a seductive tale.”
—Booklist

Kirkus Reviews

Cook's 27th dip into his fictional characters' troubled past asks why an expatriate writer took his own life. Before he rowed out to the middle of a pond and slit his wrists, Julian Wells' most notable legacy was his shelf of meticulously researched true-crime studies of notorious serial killers. His death, however, creates a more poignant legacy for his sister Loretta, a failed actress and copy editor, and his old friend Philip Anders, a reviewer whose father, like Julian's, was a State Department functionary. Why would Julian have chosen to kill himself during a particularly quiet period of a largely uneventful life? Taking his cue from the dedication of Julian's first book--"For Philip, sole witness to my crime"--Philip retraces his friend's steps over three continents and 40 years, focusing at length on a trip the two of them took to Argentina, a rare journey that was not designed to produce background material for one of Julian's books. He recalls their friendship with Marisol Menendez, a guide to Buenos Aires who vanished into the deep shadows of the Casa Rosada during the dirty little war of the 1980s. As he interviews an activist priest, a Casa Rosada contact of his father's, and a Russian agent who earned the sobriquet the Rostov Ripper, Philip can feel himself getting closer to one of those grimly climactic epiphanies so characteristic of Cook (The Quest for Anna Klein, 2011, etc.). This time, however, the big reveal seems neither inevitable nor weighty enough to justify the weight of the portentous buildup. This sprawling update of Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrios lacks the baleful focus of its model, or of the most successful of Cook's own nightmare excavations of the past. Wait till next year.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171730840
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	08/14/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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