One of the books that was being heavily promoted at last spring's Indie Book Buzz for librarians was Jon Katzenbach's What Comes Next. I was intrigued by the concept of an elderly man in the early stages of dementia witnessing the abduction of a teenaged girl and then struggling to keep his wits about him long enough to be able to help rescue her. My interest in the book only increased when I found out that one of my friends, a devoted reader of mysteries, was a huge Katzenbach fan and couldn't wait to get her hands on a copy. Then, not long after she started reading the book, this same friend lamented to me that she was having trouble continuing with it because the story was so incredibly violent. She wanted to know what I thought. I definitely needed to check this out.
I decided to give the audiobook a listen and was at first a little dismayed to find that the "old" man, named Adrian, was merely in his sixties, a stage in life that I no longer consider to be all that old. I also had a little trouble at first acclimating myself to William Roberts' overly theatrical sounding narration. However, I kept going and found myself getting drawn deeper and deeper into the pathos evoked by a demented Adrian communicating with his dead wife, brother, and son who just happen to be providing him with extremely valuable advice on how to proceed with his quest to rescue the abducted teen. Far fetched? Yes, but it made for an extremely compelling narrative.
But Adrian is not the only sympathetic character Katzenbach creates for this story. Fifteen year old Jennifer is a perfect storm of pathos; a loner at school with an equally unhappy homelife, still mourning for her dead father and using a teddy bear that he had once given her as a surrogate for his love. However, all of this pales in comparison to what happens to Jennifer after she is abducted and is thrown into a situation that is every parent's worst nightmare.
And then there's Terri Collins, single mother and police detective. Terri is tormented by Jennifer's abduction because she had intervened in Jennifer's two previous runaway attempts and was aware of Jennifer's less than perfect home life. Terri also has our sympathy because she is trying her best to be a good parent to her young daughter in spite of the fact that she too experienced a difficult childhood and a painful domestic situation.
One of Katzenbach's strengths as a writer is that he is also able to create vividly unsavory villians. Not only are Linda and Michael lovers, but they are also business partners; how they utilize Jennifer to produce large sums of money for themselves is horrifying and brutal, both physically and psychologically. Once the heart of their crime is revealed, the focus of the book turns to whether or not Jennifer will be rescued from the grip of Linda and Michael before it is too late.
Yet another selling point of Katzenbach's writing is that he makes the effort to provide his readers with especially well drawn portraits of secondary characters; registered sex offender Mark Wolfe is both a suspect and a source of valuable information and Katzenbach puts the reader in the uncomfortable position of feeling both revulsion and pity for Wolfe. Another neat trick of the author's is to provide some serious social commentary through relatively brief encounters with a couple of college frat boys, a pair of New York sophisticates and some wealthy Russians. That these characters' stories are left unresolved is no accident and at the end of the book I found this lack of resolution to be as disturbing as any of the events that went before it.
I was surprised to find that by the conclusion of this 13 disk audiobook, not only had I grown accustomed to the sound and style of William Roberts' narration, but that I was actually going to miss listening to him, a testament to how engrossed in the book I became.
I do have one question, though. In the world of fiction, are there any female detectives out there who are not single mothers? The last female detective I can remember who was happily married with children was Mary Beth Lacey and that show was cancelled in 1988.
Sounds interesting!
Posted by: sydney | August 14, 2012 at 01:02 AM