Dominance by Will Lavender
Hardcover, 368 Pages
2011, Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1451617291
Synopsis
THE PROCEDURE HAS BEGUN . . .
Fifteen years earlier. Jasper College is buzzing with the news that famed literature professor Richard Aldiss will be teaching a special night class called Unraveling a Literary Mystery—from a video feed in his prison cell. In 1982, Aldiss was convicted of the murders of two female grad students; the women were killed with axe blows and their bodies decorated with the novels of notoriously reclusive author Paul Fallows. Even the most obsessive Fallows scholars have never seen him. He is like a ghost. Aldiss entreats the students of his night class to solve the Fallows riddle once and for all. The author’s two published novels, The Coil and The Golden Silence, are considered maps to finding Fallows’s true identity. And the only way in is to master them through a game called the Procedure. You may not know when the game has begun, but when you receive an invitation to play, it is an invitation to join the elite ranks of Fallows scholars. Failure, in these circles, is a fate worse than death. Soon, members of the night class will be invited to play along . . .
Present day. Harvard professor Alex Shipley made her name as a member of Aldiss’s night class. She not only exposed the truth of Paul Fallows’s identity, but in the process uncovered information that acquitted Aldiss of the heinous 1982 crimes. But when one of her fellow night class alums is murdered— the body chopped up with an axe and surrounded by Fallows novels—can she use what she knows about Fallows and the Procedure to stop a killer before each of her former classmates is picked off, one by one?
Review
Dominance contains an interesting and completely unexpected mystery that bounces back and forth through time seamlessly. Students from a night class fifteen years ago are being murdered. That class, taught by an imprisoned convicted murder is somehow tied to these new deaths. The police believe the class's star pupil, Alex, can figure out how the class relates to the murders beyond the victim with some help from the now free professor.
Dominance is a literary mystery of sorts, as it relates to novels in many different parts of the story. The night class investigated the mystery of the author Paul Fallows. The crime scenes often involve books. Many of the former students have gone on into literature as a profession, be it writing it, teaching it or acting it out on stage. The mystery of Paul Fellows, the mystery of his books, the mystery of the previous murders and the mystery of the current murders all revolve around that which is hidden in books.
Dominance is a difficult book to describe as it is a multi-layered mystery. Its plotting is nicely complicated. It evolves well, with multiple mysteries all being presented piece by piece, culminating in a shock-after-shock-after-shock ending. Dominance is a highly intelligent, yet eerily disturbing mystery that will leave the reader fearfully anxious at every turn.
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