The Black Snow

Darkness the Color of Snow: A Novel by Thomas Cobb (William Morrow Paperbacks, $15.99, 304 pages)

Darkness the Color of Snow is Thomas Cobb’s fourth novel. Most known for his 1987 debut, Crazy Heart, for which Jeff Bridges won the Academy Award for Best Actor in the 2009 film adaptation, Cobb has paced his output. He’s released a collection of short stories along with two other novels.

Darkness is quite good. Ronny Forbert, a young policeman and a reclamation project of the police chief, Gordy Hawkins, becomes mired in a traffic stop gone bad. In a rural northeastern town, Ronny pulls over a car on a rural road in the middle of winter. The car is full of drunk and uncooperative townies, who ironically happen to be his old running buddies. (If the story took place in the south, one would characterize the local malcontents as “rednecks.” As it takes place in the north, I suppose “ignorant losers” will do.)

When ringleader Matt Laferiere becomes uncooperative, Forbert decides to arrest him and, failing to call for backup, the story takes off. During the resulting fracas, Matt becomes the victim of a hit and run, and many of the characters are swallowed up in the sad reality of American small town politics. Complicating things further is the fact that Forbert is dating Laferiere’s former girlfriend.

The writing is strong throughout. The telling inspires confidence from the outset, though the blunder that sets the story in motion (the failure to call for backup) was obvious initially even to someone – like me, who has no law enforcement background or an inherent passion for crime novels. It is a bit of a distraction when Cobb alternates between the present and the past to provide context and texture to the events and characters. While this does not ultimately interfere with the reader’s overall pleasure, it comes to mind that perhaps the middle third of the novel could have been handled in a more effective manner.

Even the impeccable credentials of Police Chief Hawkins and the integrity of some local officials cannot stop the vicious spiral of events that have been set in motion. As one who deals with local politics on a daily basis and has experienced the bizarre on a first hand basis, I found this story to be many things. It is, plain and simply, a good book. To me, it also serves as a cautionary tale of how democracy is not always everything it is cracked up to be, despite the fact that there is no better substitute.

Well recommended.

Dave Moyer

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

The trade paperback version of Darkness the Color of Snow was released on August 16, 2016.

Dave Moyer is a public school superintendent in the greater Chicago area, and is the author of Life and Life Only: A Novel.

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A Town Without Pity

The Chaos of Order

Toby Ball’s debut novel,The Vaults (St. Martin’s Press) is a fine first work.   Fans of crime novels and/or the suspense/thriller genre will find this an enjoyable read.   Ball is true to the convention of short chapters and brief vignettes and anecdotes that keep the reader turning to the next page.

The Vaults are essentially a record (literally a criminal record) of one city’s depravity, and when the sole archivist, Arthur Puskis, notices that something is amiss with his detailed system of categorizing the files, the reader is led along a trail of corruption that reaches to the highest level, mayor Red Henry’s office.   Set in the 1930’s, the story involves tales of big labor, organized crime, political corruption, and journalistic heroes, somewhat reminiscent of a Doctorow novel.

The story is best when it does what it purports to do:  tell an action tale.   The plot is carefully constructed, and the pace is fast.   This reviewer’s primary criticism is that it became difficult to truly care about where the story was headed because it was difficult to actually care about the characters themselves.

In the first half of the book, character after character is introduced with little development and few clues as to what makes them tick or motivates their behavior.   The character one is inclined to be most attracted to at the outset, Puskis, essentially disappears for a good portion of the first half of the book, only to reappear more prominently toward the end to help tie the story together.   Frings, the reporter, who is the closest thing to a hero this book offers, is a rather shallow fellow and not overly likeable.   In the end, Poole, the Private Investigator whose travails run parallel to Frings’ throughout the book, probably comes across as the person with the most conviction and integrity in the story.

There are a few moments where there’s an attempt at social commentary, such as when Puskis contemplates whether the improved technology introduced to the Vaults will take away a layer of humanity from the information people receive or when Puskis and Van Vossen, who has set out to write a book about the tales hidden away, contemplate the significance of the collective humanity contained in the Vaults and come to the realization that order cannot be imposed on the natural universe by man.   Generally speaking, though, there is little of this.   That type of thought and discourse is not really the point of this novel.

Overall, the writing is strong and unforced.   The reader has to occasionally suspend belief to allow for some of the events to connect, but that is why they call it fiction.   This book is recommended.

This review was written by Dave Moyer, author of the novel Life and Life Only.   A review copy was provided by the publisher.