Mortal Memory

Rating:
Summary: Maybe his best
Review: An amazing psychological story. Cook always keeps me guessing but I really didn't get this until the end. Great writing, great insight into good and evil and how difficult it can be to see the real evil that's right in front of you. Things are not always what they seem to be, don't assume anything. I think that's the real message of this great story.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe his best
Review: An amazing psychological story. Cook always keeps me guessing but I really didn't get this until the end. Great writing, great insight into good and evil and how difficult it can be to see the real evil that's right in front of you. Things are not always what they seem to be, don't assume anything. I think that's the real message of this great story.

Rating:
Summary: Plan to spend th wwhole day reading this one....
Review: Because you will NOT want to put it down! I can't think of anything to say about this amazing, edge of your seat, desperately want to read ahead for clues novel by Thomas Cook without giving anything away.

This story is typical a Cook novel in the fact that is takes place in the present and the past - the adult and the child must look back in the past to truly live life in the present. Mortal Memory focuses on Stephen Farris, a happily married man and successful architect with a gruesome past that he has successfully buried for many years until author Rebecca Soltero contacts him about his father.

As a child Stephen's father murdered his siblings and his mother - then cleaned his mother's body, ate a ham sandwich and left. He waited two hours alone in his house with the bodies of his family - all except for Stephen. What was he waiting for?

Stephen must dredge up his past for author Rebecca to make peace for himself. This a stunningly well crafted thriller as well as an amazingly unique story. One that continues to make you think long after you have finished the book. A plot that the reader will mostly likely remember for some time to come. One of the best thrillers I have read in ages.

Rating:
Summary: Plan to spend th wwhole day reading this one....
Review: Because you will NOT want to put it down! I can't think of anything to say about this amazing, edge of your seat, desperately want to read ahead for clues novel by Thomas Cook without giving anything away.

This story is typical a Cook novel in the fact that is takes place in the present and the past - the adult and the child must look back in the past to truly live life in the present. Mortal Memory focuses on Stephen Farris, a happily married man and successful architect with a gruesome past that he has successfully buried for many years until author Rebecca Soltero contacts him about his father.

As a child Stephen's father murdered his siblings and his mother - then cleaned his mother's body, ate a ham sandwich and left. He waited two hours alone in his house with the bodies of his family - all except for Stephen. What was he waiting for?

Stephen must dredge up his past for author Rebecca to make peace for himself. This a stunningly well crafted thriller as well as an amazingly unique story. One that continues to make you think long after you have finished the book. A plot that the reader will mostly likely remember for some time to come. One of the best thrillers I have read in ages.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best work-
Review: I can't believe that this is the same author who wrote "Evidence of Blood" & "Breakheart Hill". I was very disappointed by this book. The main character was not likable & whereas in his other books, where the suspense just kept mounting until the very end, this book dragged so badly that I looked at the end to see if I wanted to read the whole thing. Read some of his other books instead!

Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: I was completely enthralled by this book. A near-perfect melding of character and plot.

Rating:
Summary: Intense
Review: In Mortal Memory, Thomas Cook focuses on Steven Farris, a 40-something suburbanite who lives with the knowledge that his father murdered his mother and two siblings. Now an adult with his own family, Steven seems to live the perfect life until Rebecca enters. She has set out to write a novel about men who murder their families, and she wants to find out what Steven remembers about his own family. This causes Steven--who narrates this first-person tale--to dig far deeper into the psyche of his dead family; it turns out that he remembers much more than he thought. In the act of remembering, will Steven learn that the sins of the father revisit the son?

But what pushed his seemingly mild-mannered, gentle father into such a barbaric act?

Cook writes with a dreamlike quality; at times, I felt like I was wading through a dream, knowing in some ways how it would turn out but unable to wake up. His words are haunting, and this is a disturbing look into the secret world of a "normal" family. I thought I had the story all figured out, but I was truly surprised by a couple of twists along the way. I was unable to pull away from this novel and even dragged it along on vacation with me in order to finish it. This is worthy of valuable reading time. Don't expect a cleanly wrapped up ending; Cook's story here is a bit too complex for that. However, the writing is excellent, the story is compelling, and the characters get under the skin. Read this one!

Rating:
Summary: Evocative exploration of family memory
Review: November 1959, the heart of a baby-boom childhood, comes to a sudden, dislocating cataclysm for Stevie Farris. "Don't look back," his aunt instructs, as she drives him away from his home, now a charnel house containing the corpses of his mother, his older sister and brother. His father has fled, leaving behind evidence that his quiet life masked murderous emotions. And Steve Farris does NOT look back until, at the classic time of midlife reevaluation, he begins to reopen his memories. His 'guide' to the past is a woman who is writing a 'true crime' study of men who have murdered their families. Cook's earlier work in the true crime genre gives a chilly feeling of verisimilitude to the gradual reopening of the case. He has a thoroughly canny feel for what the surface aftermath of a violent murder looks like--and an uncanny feel for how deceiving that surface appearance may be. The assumptions of thirty years continue to drive Farris as he obsessively peels away layer after layer of defenses between himself and his memories, and in the process destroys his own family life. Readers who take time will watch enthralled as he unveils the portrait of a family-- especially of a father-- increasingly at odds with the explosive crime that destroys a home. The true crime writer is right about the nature of the crime, the impulses that created it, the psychology of the killer. But she, and Farris, still have the story all wrong. As Cook's narrator explores the double-edged question "What did your father do?" we come to share his sense of remembered love, deep respect, and continually increasing disbelief, horror and loathing, for the 'inevitable' end that is to come. The final discovery of truth makes devastating sense. Cook, as always, proves himself a sensitive and evocative writer. The beauty of a girl, the bone-cold chill of a November rain, a garment lying white and tangled in the grass, a man standing in the woods, stretching his palms out to receive falling snow, the secrets child! ren fully observe and fatally fail to understand--these are the details he beautifully accumulates to tell a sad and terrible story. I'm not sure why Cook feels compelled in this novel, as in some others, to commit just one blatant and cruel twist of the plot that the story could well have done without. However, this fault does not destroy the power of his narrative flow--just throws a momentary check into the path. Well worth reading!

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: The novel is about Stephen, a man whose father killed his entire family when he was only a boy. Stephen was spared only because he was not in the house at the moment.

This is a compelling, written story which draws the reader into Stephen's psyche on his quest to find out why his father committed the murders. Along the way, family secrets are uncovered, repressed memories come back to haunt, and exciting plot twists keep us turning the pages, as Stephen finally learns the truth.

Definitely one of the best books I have read this year, and Im looking forward to reading more by the author.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best work-
Review: This is quite a book, with one of the most original premises anyone is ever likely to adopt.Without betraying any of the details of the story, the real action consists of the narrator slipping helplessly into a midlife crisis of his own as the result of his initially voluntary, then complusive, exploration of his father's crime. The character study is intense and unforgettable; it is not possible to leave the book unfinished. I give the book a 9 because some of the plot twists seem slightly artifical. (I can't say more without betraying the plot). The gradual darkening of the central character's life is expertly done, and moves the book close to mainstram stuff. The quality of prose is infinitely superior to most mystery fiction. (While there is little if any direct humor in the text, I was amused to note that the author has set the action at an address on MacDonald Drive. The allusion to the well-known Green Beret family murderer in a book with this theme can hardly be coincidental.)