And in My Spare Time: I Read

Will Lavender’s debut novel Obedience starts out like a staid college course and, after an unpredictable roller coaster ride, ends with a weirdly satisfying AHA. You come to care about the college students who begin by believing this is just an exercise for their logic class and end by realizing this was far more sinister than any of them imagined.

He uses all the best of the thriller writing techniques, like the deadline which paces the book to make it a real page-turner. Then he incorporates little clues like names you know were mentioned early on to, what are seemingly innocent, meetings with people bearing resemblance to, names sounding the same, life story or ghostly presence.

The premise for the tale is mind-boggling and as it twists and turns you can’t help but formulate your own theories. About the time you think you have the answer it is blown right out of the water.

It proves to be unpredictable right up to the end. For book club participants, I think you should get extra points and brownies for not secretly skipping to the end. The suspense is satisfying and all the loose ends fit together in the end.

It makes you wonder how much energy bad guys must generate to actually come up with some of these evil schemes. Let us hope that this is just fiction.

I suggest you read this with the lights on and large dog for company. It is published by Random House under the Crown Publishing Group’s name and published February 2008.