Product Description

Thomas Cook is one of today's most acclaimed writers of psychological thrillers, penning hypnotic tales of forbidden love and devastating secrets. Now he has written an unforgettable novel that weaves one man's tortured life with a deadly mystery that spans five decades....

Riverwood is an artists' community in the Hudson River valley, a serene place where writers can perfect their craft. But for all its beauty and isolation, it was once touched by a terrible crime--the murder of a teenage girl who lived on the estate fifty years ago.  Faye Harrison's killer was never caught--and now her dying mother is desperate to learn the truth about her daughter's murder.

Enter Paul Graves, a writer who draws upon the pain of his own tragic past to write haunting tales of mystery. Graves has been summoned to Riverwood for an unusual assignment: to apply the art of fiction to a crime that was real, and then write a story that will answer the questions that keep Faye's mother from a peaceful death. Just a story. It doesn't have to be true. Or does it?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #950958 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-01
• Released on: 1999-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 336 pages

From Amazon.com
Paul Graves is a crime writer obsessed with a single crime--the murder of his own teenaged sister on their Southern farm almost 40 years before. To work out his guilt and fear, he has created a series of mysteries set at the turn of the century, in which a dedicated detective pursues a fiendish killer called Kessler--the real name of the man who slaughtered his sister. His obsession has made Graves a sad, lonely man, "living thinly, without connections," already preparing to kill himself when he can no longer write his books.

Keeping readers interested in a dark and brooding character like Graves is no easy task, and Thomas H. Cook--who won an Edgar for his superb The Chatham School Affair--needs all his narrative skills to avoid sinking us in a sea of gloom. Invited to Riverwood, a Hudson River Valley estate turned into a writers' retreat, to help solve a 50-year-old mystery involving the death of a young woman, Graves is assisted by a shrewd and sympathetic playwright, Eleanor Stern. Together, they sift through all the clues linking the dead girl to the wealthy family who owned the estate. Old-fashioned detective work plays a large part in discovering what really happened, as well as the too-convenient appearance of files and live witnesses from the period. As for Graves and his disconcerting habit of slipping back into the past at more and more frequent intervals ("You're always imagining things, aren't you? Terrible things," one character says to him), a final revelation about his personal demons turns out to be no surprise at all. Other, more satisfying Cook books available in paperback include Evidence of Blood and Breakheart Hill. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
Cook's previous novel, The Chatham School Affair (1996), won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. His latest is every bit its equal, a beautifully composed tale with enough plot twists to satisfy even fans who have learned to expect surprises from this talented author. Protagonist Paul Graves is a writer of dark, violent crime novels that feature a sadistic killer, Kessler, his cringing assistant, Sykes, and Slovak, the detective who doggedly pursues these master criminals. Graves sets his stories in turn-of-the-century New York?far enough back in time that he can safely distance himself from the grisly crimes he conjures. But he can't distance himself from the horror that he still feels at the murder of his own sister, committed when he was a child. As the novel begins, Graves is asked to investigate a real murder by Allison Davies, who runs a writer's colony at Riverwood, her family estate in the Hudson River Valley. In 1946, a young girl, Faye Harrison, was murdered there, and the crime has never been solved. The victim's aged mother would like some closure before she dies. Graves agrees to look into the crime in order to keep his own personal demons at bay for a while longer. Cook employs many of the typical conventions of the genre, even resorting to the classic device of timetables. His complex plot is anything but dated, however. He excels in devising harrowing situations that eerily echo Graves's personal tragedy, ultimately delivering another indelibly haunting tale that once again demonstrates that he is among the best in the business.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Paul Graves, a writer of dark, historical mysteries, is hired to research the 50-year-old murder of an innocent girl and write a story that might explain it. His own tortured past as childhood witness to his sister's murder colors his every thought and action. Using shifting points of view, Paul presents his investigation as a series of leads that turn false, forcing him to revise his view of the case. In a multiple-twist ending, he and his fictional character seem to merge, even as a female acquaintance appears destined to become a character in a future story. Cook has previously used the premise of a troubled narrator looking back at a tragedy that has shaped many lives, most recently in Breakheart Hill (LJ 7/95) and the Edgar Award-winning The Chatham School Affair (LJ 7/96). Here, his Gothic, even melodramatic, prose style emphasizes mood and setting but will often seem repetitious and jarring to contemporary readers. This may appeal to mystery fans wanting something closer to Poe than to Chandler; those wanting more action than angst should pass.
-ARoland C. Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Quiet but powerful
This book is breathtaking. It is a quiet mystery - no car chases, captures, narrow escapes, etc, but the writing is beautiful and lyrical, and the mystery is powerful - the author deftly weaves the horrible events from Graves' childhood with the mystery he is exploring, and fills the book with intriguing suspects, twists and turns, and surprises. Underneath this is a powerful thread - Graves' guilt, which both destroyed his life and allowed his success as a writer, and the horrors of the Nazis, which crept into the quiet world of Ravenwood. ***WARNING - SPOILER AHEAD*** Graves tears at the reader's heart - he was a good, hardworking teenager who was confronted with horrors that were too large for him to handle and made a choice based upon these, but he cannot see that as a teenager he was not to blame for the choices, and should not carry a lifetime of guilt for them. At first I was very angry about the ending, but when I reread it carefully I realized I misunderstood it, and the ending is actually perfect - a chance for Graves' redemption and forgiveness. Overall, this book is dark and very moving.

Tedious and lurid
Fifty years ago, the peaceful artist's community of Riverwood was shattered by the murder of young Faye Harrison. The killer was never caught. In the present Paul Graves, a famous writer of detective stories, is called by one of the residents to give Faye's dying mother a plausible explanation of what happened to her daughter. It does not have to be a true one, as long as it is believable.
But Graves is a haunted man who has seen his older sister brutally murdered years ago, and his books all feature the namesake of the man who killed her, as well as plumbing the depths of darkness within the human mind. Gloomy and tormented by his memories, he is determined to find out the truth about what happened to Faye, even if it means confronting his own demons.
This is a book not for the faint-hearted. In the short space allotted to him to probe the depths of a killer's mind, Cook manages to pack about every ignomity done by man to (wo)man, with the possible exception of rape (only alluded at). But this display of gruesomeness grows tedious and seems to serve no interest other than to shock the reader. What a pity. The initial premise was quite original, but the story lapses into a detective-cum-psychological thriller that not only features irritating 'revelations' by convenient witnesses (the policeman in charge of the case fifty years back not only has a son, but the man is willing to help two perfect strangers as they rifle through his papers and cast dispersion on his father's honesty) but also a rather bland dénouement.
The ending was supposed to be a surprise,I surmise. But Graves' role in his sister's death was obvious from the beginning, and the final explanation of how Faye was killed leaves something to be desired (to be honest, I thought this kind of resolution was a no-go in detective stories; I mean this is cheating). And the language grows a little too florid, even if I understand that it is partly due to Paul's taste for melodrama.
Avoid.

Perfect Book for Mystery Lovers!
I really enjoyed reading Cook's Instruments of Night. I, being the mystery reader I am, thought that this book posessed all of the qualities a good mystery book should have. Suspense, horror, chills, good detective work, etc. The twists and turns in this book were unbelieveable! It seemed like once you had gotten your mind set on one thing, another thing would present itself, changing your whole perspective. The ending was amazing finding out who Sykes was and how Faye really died. This was the first book that I read of Cook's and will definitely not be my last.