Light Before Day
3.9
32
5
1
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780743470407 |
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| Publisher: | Pocket Star |
| Publication date: | 11/27/2007 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 512 |
| Sales rank: | 683,080 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.18(w) x 6.75(h) x 1.10(d) |
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Customer Reviews
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Light Before Day
3.9 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
32 reviews.
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Light Before Day starts out slow and tries to build to something, but it skips right over being a page-turner and jumps straight into the implausible and over-done action. But what could have been a good mystery/thriller or could have been a good piece about the shady underbelly of the drug-induced party scene was instead turned into an almost-good story marred by pretentious attempts at being serious literature.
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Chris Rice's fiction finally grows up. The thinly disguised author self insert is a journalist in LA this time, an alcoholic suffering from frequent blackouts. The New Orleans connection and the nutjob mother are both still there. Maybe in the next book, we can do without those? Maybe? Please? It's in the genre of LA detective stories, only a lot more gay. The story is set among West Hollywood's gay community, and exposes the horrifying truth about the consquences of the club scene's methamphetamine trend. Children are dying so other people can party. The protagonist sets out, with his mentor, a gruff (and straight) middle aged author of hardboiled detective novels, to find missing men, missing boys and expose a shocking secret involving a very wealthy man. His author friend is really quite amusing, a great foil for the narrator.The further into the plot you get, the more disturbing it becomes. Readers also get to watch the protagonist morph from a self indulgent, drunken loser to an independent, mature man who is able to care for someone even more helpless. Once again, Rice slips in a tiny bit of his knowledge of art history toward the end (watch for it, it's subtle this time). I will say however, that the plot is extremely convoluted and requires your total concentration to be able to keep up with it. I've read this book twice and I'm still not sure I totally understand everything that happened.
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A struggling journalist named Adam gets wrapped up in a horrific ring of deception, murder and greed as he searches for a lost flame that mysteriously disappeared. All the while a woman searches for the man responsible for the accidental death of her mother during a meth lab explosion.Christopher Rice's first two books left indelible images in my mind, either due to the horrific nature of particular scenes (The Snow Garden) or because the characters seemed to jump out of the pages (Density of Souls). This one didn't have either of those things going for it. It was a decent enough mystery novel, if not a bit convoluted and overly complicated, but nothing came out of left field to surprise me or leaving me breathless.The writing itself is great, per usual, despite a tendency for characters to wander off and disappear for hundreds of pages at a time before wandering back in because they're suddenly important. The story of the woman searching for the cause of her mother's murder disappeared for so long that I forgot about it until suddenly the story jerks over to a convenience store somewhere far away from the bars and mansions of West Hollywood. Gay porn star Nathan gets Adam started on his horrific journey down the rabbit hole only to disappear until he's strategically needed 150 pages later. Perhaps it was due simply to the large number of characters that had a pivotal moment within the complex mystery that they couldn't all be featured regularly, but I still found myself looking back to remember who certain people were with they randomly reappeared.Once the two apparently convergent story lines merged, the story flew by. Caroline and Adam are perfect foils of each other, her violence and aggression balancing out his fear and morbid curiosity. The outcome wasn't completely predictable, due to the culprit's motive more than his actions.I was just left a little disappointed because Christopher Rice has written books that are still ingrained in my memory years later, and I don't think this one will be well remembered in a few months.
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Absolutely brilliant! This novel takes several turns that are not only unexpected, but thought provoking. I guarantee the reader will be entranced by the first page and left breathless as they uncover Rice's tale piece by horrifyingly addictive piece
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Christopher Rice has woven a tightly nuanced murder-mystery plot with, for the most part, very believable characters. Just when I thought I had it figured out, he gave it just the right twist to make me rethink the remaining cast of characters. Mr. Rice has developed his talented and thoughtful main character and his richly diverse LA stomping grounds enough to work them both into a mystery series.
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Somewhat different from my usual reading list, but very entertaining after getting through the slow moving beginning. The plot was complex enough to keep me interested then the story took flight.
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I love the way Christopher Rice writes and develops his characters however, I felt this book was slow and a little drawn out.
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This is the first Christopher Rice book I've read. As I started it, I had no idea what to expect, but very quickly found myself thoroughly engaged. It's not a fast read; there were several times that I found myself getting confused with all of the different plot twists and had to go back and re-read certain passages. Still though, it was a very inventive and well-executed story. I'm not a literary snob, so my criteria for good books are simple: Is the plot interesting? Can I "see" the characters and scenes? Is the dialogue realistic and believable? Are the characters' actions and decisions realistic? For all of these questions, the answer was yes! Well done, Mr. Rice. I'm definitely going to check out some of your other works.
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Much better than his second, this story line never slows down. There are surprises every twenty pages or so that change the direction of the story. And the intensity of some of his scenes! I felt like I was watching from a corner. Also, he is more direct in his character development and plot than in his earlier works. Certain phrases just jumped out of the blue in their descriptive nature and in their humor.
His first book was very good. This work is great.
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Good, definitely not his best. That title is still held by 'A Density of Souls.' I still enjoyed this book. I thought it was good, different/original plot, with cool twists, but it still doesnt hold a candle to his first novel.
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i was a little disappointed in this one. his book Density of Souls was so great and personally my favorite.
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I'm a big fan of Christopher Rice I finished both his other books in a matter of days. Within 150 pages of Light Before Day, I was ready to put it down and not finish. His characters all run together, since they share so many base characteristics. Rice adds new characters so quickly it is impossible to understand what information they're giving, or to remember where the other characters fit into the story. Rather than portraying his gay characters as equal to the other characters, the homosexuals in this novel are painted as drug addicts, sexaholics, and generally bad people. The only thing that got me through the book was hope that it would all be explained clearly in the end. Fans of Christopher Rice: you'll be disappointed. Anybody else: read his other work first.
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