Rating: 
Summary: A little slow at first but worth the wait
Review: This being the first work of Dobyns I have read, I had no expectations. From the first line I was hooked, the entire novel was read in one sitting. All in not well because it does not end well. What a disappoinment in the last few chapters, he turned this captivating work of a creepy social commentary of small town paranoia into a dreadful over-the-top cartoonish who-done-it. However, due to the author's great command of the English language I will pick up another one of his works and cross my fingers.
Rating: 
Summary: Ugh. Like swimming through molasses
Review: This was the dullest murder/suspense novel I've ever read. Reading it was like being smothered. It seems to have been written by a mutant blend of Stephen King and William Faulkner, and not in a good way.Right from page 1 you know that three young teenagers in this small upstate NY town have been murdered; the only suspense is who did it and why, which isn't revealed until around page 400 of a 418-page novel. The rest is filler and red herrings in the shape of small-town gossip and conjecture, told through a high school biology teacher who's a longtime resident of said small town. I finished it, skimming the last 100 or so pages, because with murder mysteries, I want to know whodunit. If you like mysteries, horror, suspense, that sort of thing, don't bother with this book. I don't know if this is typical of Dobyns' output; if so, I doubt I'll read anything by him again. At least I didn't pay money for the book; it was a loaner from a friend whose tastes generally mesh better with mine than they did this time.
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