Read in June 2013
The Kitchen House, by Kathleen Grissom
Two Stars
The Kitchen House is a first novel, and many of the problems with this book stem from that fact. Kathleen Grissom has a great idea for a story but lacks the skill to execute it well. Her protagonist is seven years old at the start of the novel, an immigrant Irish girl who finds herself an indentured servant living among the black slaves on a backwoods Virginia plantation. To allow both Lavinia and the reader to learn essential backstory, Grissom adopts a novice author’s desperate move: having characters who have been intimately familiar with the backstory for years discuss it — “You’ll recall, Papa, that Bessie is the illegitimate daughter of the master and his favorite slave woman,” “Of course, Mama, but you’ll remember the missus thinks Bessie is master’s lover, not his daughter,” “And don’t forget, Papa, that the young master — Bessie’s half brother — thinks the same way.” Another weakness of the storytelling is Grissom’s reluctance to let the novel unfold in showing scenes, preferring telling summaries of events that happen off the page. In addition, there are simply too many characters — instead of one slave girl the same age as Lavinia, Grissom gives us twins, plus another slave a few years younger and yet another a few years older. Having too many characters dilutes the reader’s interest and emotional investment. Finally, Grissom’s characters are too often caricatures — the evil overseer, the ne’er-do-well heir, the neurotic lady of the manner — and the plot is littered with lurid pot-boilers but the writing lacks the historical verisimilitude that makes for compelling historical fiction.
The Hypnotist, by Lars Kepler
Three Stars
This book has a promising opening. SPOILER ALERT. After a fatal slasher attack on a family, police ask a defrocked psychiatric hypnotist to hypnotize the lone survivor — a 15-year-old boy — in hopes of locating his missing older sister, who investigators fear may also be targeted for death. But the reluctant hypnotist discovers that the boy himself is the attacker, apparently on orders from the missing sister. Although the 15-year-old’s criminal skills seem unbelievable because they’re depicted as equaling Jason Bourne’s tradecraft, the first half of the novels builds with scary tension towards a climax, but before reaching it, Kepler stops the action cold with a 75-page flashback that is unrelated to the murders or murderer. The focus of the flashback is the therapy group 10 years earlier with which the psychiatrist employed hypnotism until one of his patients publicly attempted suicide following her revelation that she kept her starving son in a cage in her basement. In fact, the shrink learned after a search of the woman’s home turned up nothing, his patient had no children, and in the ensuing scandal he publicly agreed to never practice hypnotism again. After 75 pages, the point becomes clear — his use of hypnotism again on the slasher killer becomes big news which is quickly followed by the kidnapping of his 15-year-old hemophiliac son. The murder investigation is quickly settled — and forgotten — with a terrifying finale, and a new pursuit gets underway. The result is a too-long novel that sacrifices the climax of one truly chilling story for another that is much less believable, featuring multiple slavering psychotics and a complicated breathlessly-narrated daring-do finale that is clearly designed for the big screen rather than as a logical and satisfying ending to the preceding novel. In addition to the senseless sacrifice of tension with an interminable flashback and unbelievability of the 15-year-old killer, I have a couple more quibbles. After Stieg Larson, hidden basement chambers seem obligatory in Swedish crime fiction, and Kepler gives us two — one in each story. And although the psychiatrist is depicted as a skilled clinician, the fact that one of his patients was institutionalized after killing her younger brother comes as a complete surprise to him, even 10 years after said patient’s public suicide after his “false” accusation that she kept her son in a cage in her basement almost derailed his career. To me the best crime fiction either ties up all lose threads or leaves only lose threads that leave readers tantalized with a reasonable doubt. In this outing, Kepler demonstrates a promising talent who would clearly benefit from firm guidance by an equally talented editor.