Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb
My rating: 3/5 cats
My father used to say that people are like goats. What they can’t eat, they shit on.
this is a decent smalltown crime novel that is much closer in tone to russell banks than to cormac mccarthy. although it is being compared to No Country for Old Men, it’s definitely neither as violent nor as nihilistic as that book. it does involve crime, but crime on the very smallest scale – DUI, farm equipment theft, adolescent vandalism and arson – this is low-level stuff that has high impact on the community, but we’re not even close to mccarthy’s brand of casual assassination and suitcase-full-of money scenarios.
it opens with a bizarre accident that none of its participants could have predicted, but one that doesn’t seem farfetched at all – it’s a great scene detailing the unexpected consequences of what should have been a routine traffic violation that ends in a man’s death.
but in a small town where everyone knows everyone else and tensions are high with old resentments and political agendas, neither the stop nor the fallout is gonna be routine.
cobb does a really good job setting the stage – a young patrolman making a call that ended badly, his relationship to the dead man whose troublemaking shenanigans have long plagued the town, and the grizzled police chief who took a chance on reforming a hooligan into a lawman. throw in all the various pressures, both political and social, affecting the situation, where the event is twisted to serve the ambitions of opportunistic people, and you got yourself a real powderkeg of intrigue. i’m glad that i was reading this while making my way through friday night lights, because they both do the smalltown values and behind-the-scenes manipulation really well, where individuals get steamrolled by these tiny political machines.
overall, this is well-crafted and it has a really strong sense of character and psychological density. i just didn’t think the ending was satisfying. View Spoiler »
also, the epilogue didn’t add much to the story and seemed flat with its “and that’s how we wrap it up, folks!” feel. but it’s a good story, and i never felt annoyed while reading it; there just wasn’t anything particularly special about it. i probably read too many books like this to be a good judge of it – it suffers by comparison, but i think most people who aren’t overexposed to books like this will like it more than i did.
3.5
