Solar Eclipse

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Summary: Gruntings from the Farris cave and tales of Marlboro country
Review: Having heard many good things about John Farris, I picked up Solar Eclipse from the local library. I was greatly disappointed. Friends of mine praised Farris for the intricacies and cleverness of his plots. As a thriller/mystery, I found the plot of this book highly generic, formulaic and conventional. There were no surprises here to any fan of B movies (or B novels). Worse, I found his characterizations of women and men (and what passes for intimacy between them) to be slightly to the right of Neanderthal man's perspective.

Farris has been compared to Stephen King. Well, to my mind, he lacks King's grace with language and he certainly lacks King's mordant and insightful take on American popular culture and the darkness that lurks beneath the seemingly ordinary and innocent.

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Summary: wow what a story
Review: I personally like john farris,s work always did. I read his other works he is very diverse.I loved the characters in this book.They were vicious and unique.This is basically a story about the discovery of a murdered family in a small town in Utah.The family is discovered by spirited stuntwoman Shay Waco, who is visiting her father after many years.She meets sheriff Toby Bonner and he falls in love with her.however,the murder is just part of the plot.Alot of surveillance equipment was found in the murder victims home. the reader later finds out that the victims were in a witness protection program.in exchange for protection, the victims had to spy on their neighbors.prior to their murder the victims find out that neighbor wolfgang gehrig is in cahoots with a doomsday religious cult and the famed aum shirinkyo.This religious cult wants to blow up the mormon temple and create a new zion.they are trying to develope a particular bomb that has no sound.this particular cult is also beig being investigated by crooked fbi agent Dale stearman. that is the basic plot of the story but there are a lot of other things. This story is so complexely plotted I had to re-read it and I am thinking of re-reading it again.I especially liked the two evil daughters of the founder of the doomsday cult, Rosaland and Sarah.Even though they are eviland underhanded Farris manages to reveal a softer side to them. I won,t reveal any more but this book was fabulous. I would recommend this to anyone.

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Summary: First of Mr. Farris' works I've read, very enjoyable
Review: I'm sure glad I picked this up on a travel day, which was extended by 4 hours due to weather conditions. Very engrossing, not always satisfying, some of the characters a little too one-dimensional, but overall a good read.

Maybe I haven't read enough Stephen King (ok, only Christine), but I just don't get the comparisons between the authors.

This one moves pretty fast, and does make you work to keep up.