Rating: 
Summary: Why transcend?
Review: A police procedural with an ingenious false-confession plot involving belated revenge on school bullies. It's set in Spokane and is full of Spokane atmosphere. Spokane is apparently a place where anybody who goes away to college in the great sophisticated metropolis of Seattle is regarded as an over-educated city slicker. Nobody, including Caroline Mabry, the detective, is happy or successful. When they're not dying young of cancer or getting killed or drunk or jailed or stoned or maimed or being too fat or too short or bankrupt they're having psychological problems and worrying about conservative republicans winning elections. I believe this is known in the mystery/suspense business as transcending the genre. I myself don't always want the genre transcended but this is very well written and a compelling page-turner.
Rating: 
Summary: Delightfully different dectective story
Review: © 2003 by Diana Guerrero (allianceofwriters.com)
Detective Caroline Mabry meets lots of lunatics on her night shift, but this one with the eye patch is a gem. He wants to confess, but to what? When he says homicide, the journey begins. The reader travels back in time through his long written confession infused with brief glimpses back into the present and the thoughts of our heroine. An interesting read, I found the description of boyhood, teen trials, and related events to be vivid and entertaining. Land of the Blind is not your run of the mill detective story. I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Murder in Reverse: One Confession, No Body
Review: Clark Mason arrives in the Spokane police department one Friday night, looking like any other homeless person. Only he isn't. Behind his disheveled appearance, his mysterious eye patch and his quirky behavior, he holds information to a murder. Not believing him at first, Detective Caroline Mabry discards him as a lunatic, a nuisance, a bother. Clark soon convinces her, however, that there is more to his story than meets the eye. Under her consent, he proceeds to write his self-proclaimed confession for the next nineteen hours. While Clark is busy penning his confession, Caroline is busy tracking down the tiny pieces of information she gleans from him. Slowly, she pieces together the story he is writing, his confession of how everything went wrong with his world. But is he really a murderer? And if he is, whom did he murder? Despite protests that usually an investigation starts with a body, not a killer, Clark is determined to convey his story to her in the best way he knows how: through the telling of his life story, and all the events leading up to the day he met Caroline. Land of the Blind is an intriguing novel from start to finish, right down to its unusual chapter titles. Written unlike any other crime novel, its vivid descriptions and unusual twists keep the reader guessing. At times humorous and at times horrifying, this novel moves fluidly between the past and the present to tell a story unlike any other.
Rating:
Summary: Chilling story
Review: Fantastic story, well-written. The people who move through the story are very flawed, yet they held my interest. The tone reminds me a bit of Keith Snyder's books, with milder wry humor.
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Summary: Fabulous twist on the mystery
Review: Jess Walter is a fantastic mystery writer. Perhaps too good for the genre and in this novel, he starts to go beyond it, what one reviewer called, 'transcending the genre'. In this novel, Caroline Mabry, from his previous novel plays more of a supporting role in the memoir of Clark "the Loon" Mason. He wants to confess to a homicide and begins writing it out on legal pads as she checks the small bit of information he gives her. But we get to read his confession as he writes it, starting with his initial meeting with the deceased in middle school continuing on to how their lives twisted together to bring them together at the conclusion of the story. While not the standard mystery, I couldn't put this book down, finishing it in two sittings. Jess Walter writes so well, he should probably take his next book outside of the mystery genre. The description in this book is graphic and sensory, the characters are believable and interesting. I highly recommend reading this novel.
Rating:
Summary: CLEAR - EYED
Review: Jess Walter's second novel, LAND OF THE BLIND, transcends the form and formulae of the police procedural mystery. The central character who has confessed to a homicide says, "There aren't even names for some of the crimes we commit". While ostensibly about murder, it is those unnamed crimes which most interest Walter and, through him, the reader. LAND OF THE BLIND reminds me of John Irving's SAVING PIGGY SNEED. Caroline Mabry is a police detective in Spokane Washington who has been relegated to swing shift because she is burned out. Patrol officers bring in an apparent derelict caught breaking into the long-vacant Davenport Hotel who has told them he committed a murder. The one-eyed "loon" refuses to give either his name or the name of his victim, but says he will write out a confession for Caroline. Ensconced in an interview room, he starts filling page after page of a legal pad. We read segments of this confession (which begins in fifth grade) as it is written. Caroline has agreed to wait until it is finished, but cajoles from the confessee the name of one of the people who figure in the confession. Armed with that, she starts to unravel the story backwards from the present as the confession gradually unveils the past. Despite its static form, Walter keeps the story's suspense building right to the final page. He does a marevlous job of showing the cruelties of childhood and adolescence played out in the poor Empire Road district, which is "pinched like an ant farm" against the Spokane River. The social landscape of Spokane and the cultural divide between it and Seattle are thoroughly explored. Even though a central character says "Spokane is Kmart and Seattle is Nordstrom", Walter's heart clearly belongs to Spokane. He jibes contemporary Seattle with, "We turned every gas station into a coffee shop, and by the time I left Seattle you could get four hundred flavors of coffee, but you couldn't find a decent gallon of gas". In LAND OF THE BLIND the one-eyed man leads us over moral terrain where sins of commission and omission perpetrated by Jess Walter's characters may remind us uncomfortably of our own.
Rating:
Summary: In the land of the blind, the one eyed man rules all...
Review: Outstanding novel told from the aspect of the main character flashing back on pertinent events in his lifetime that have led up to his current crisis. Told in a similar style to John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany", yet immensely easier to read. The plot flows more smoothly and maintains your interest throughout. The story begins like your average detective/crime novel, but quickly becomes a flashback story as the main character - in attempt to write a confession - tells the story of his life and the life of the dead body discovered by police. The title of the book comes from the old saying: "In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man rules all." The author manages to incorporate the saying into the story in a way that will startle and move the reader. An outstanding effort with twists and turns around every corner.
Rating: 
Summary: This one took the Cake
Review: The begining was great Guy walks into police station to confess but plot warps out Leaving a gap.where the only thing worth remebering was a set-up Cant see this one getting great reviews
Rating:
Summary: Much more than a thriller
Review: The label "crime novel" is inadequate to describe this powerful and haunting book. It gets under your skin in ways that the common whodunit can't approach. First, the structure is inspired. A eye-patched man walks into a police station, asks for a legal pad and begins to write a long and rambling confession. A confession to what? We don't know, and neither does the cop, Caroline Mabry. The bulk of the book consists of this confession, which is a remarkably vivid and sensitive memoir of the traumas, bullying and casual cruelties of childhood. Eventually, Mabry picks up enough clues to uncover the man's true crime. Yet the book's strength is in its theme: That the scars of our childhood last all of our lives. They shape our adult personalities in ways we cannot understand. This man's physical scar is evident; he lost an eye in a childhood accident. The book is full of allusions to sight and vision. Yet the entire book shows us that his psychic scars were far more debilitating and just as permanent. "The Land of the Blind" will stay with you long after you put it down.
Rating:
Summary: I Couldn't Put It Down
Review: The label "crime novel" is inadequate to describe this powerful and haunting book. It gets under your skin in ways that the common whodunit can't approach. First, the structure is inspired. A eye-patched man walks into a police station, asks for a legal pad and begins to write a long and rambling confession. A confession to what? We don't know, and neither does the cop, Caroline Mabry. The bulk of the book consists of this confession, which is a remarkably vivid and sensitive memoir of the traumas, bullying and casual cruelties of childhood. Eventually, Mabry picks up enough clues to uncover the man's true crime. Yet the book's strength is in its theme: That the scars of our childhood last all of our lives. They shape our adult personalities in ways we cannot understand. This man's physical scar is evident; he lost an eye in a childhood accident. The book is full of allusions to sight and vision. Yet the entire book shows us that his psychic scars were far more debilitating and just as permanent. "The Land of the Blind" will stay with you long after you put it down.
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