Customer Reviews

The Darkest Place

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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There are serial killer novels, and then there are literary gems that involve serial killers. Dan Judson's THE DARKEST PLACE is the latter, a gorgeous, ambitious novel equal parts exploration of loss and up-till-dawn page-turner.

The plot, which follows the investigation of a series of drowning murders in the bleak post-tourist winter of Long Island's Shinnecock Bay, is filled with enough twists and reversals to keep diehard mystery readers guessing. But it's the characters that make the book hypnotic; wounded, wanting, and set on a collision course, they are richly textured and completely believable. Judson's deep empathy makes their pain and desire and trembling hope personal, and you'll find they haunt you long after you close the book.

The result is a can't-put-it-down thriller reminiscent of the best in the genre, works like MYSTIC RIVER and CLOCKERS.

Bravo!

I read Judson's previous books (The Bone Orchard and The Poisoned Rose) and enjoyed them both. When I heard he had a new book coming out after a few years, I was psyched and got it the first day it came out. It was worth the wait.

THE DARKEST PLACE was haunting, dark, filled with real characters who had experienced loss and dealt with it in vastly different ways. There's deep characterization in this novel and that's risky sometimes because there's a fine line between a literary mystery and a bore. But Judson keeps the pace up so well and dangles just enough information to the reader that makes the book impossible to put down once you're a couple chapters into it. The characters aren't all clearly cut good guys and bad guys, just like in real life and you find yourself rooting for them, wanting them to succeed and turn their lives around. There's even a shoutout to fans of his previous two books, if you're paying attention enough to one particular character, and I loved that. It was like being given a glimpse of an old friend I haven't heard from in a while.

I'd recommend this book to fans of thrillers, mysteries, and literary novels. Can't wait for Judson's next one.

Novelist Deacon Kane is haunted by the death of his son by drowning four years ago, and his reputation has slid in the college where he teaches creative writing and English lit, slid to a point where everyone's watching him to see if he makes it to class, which he rarely does any more. His boss, Dolan, really has it in for him. Just one thing seems to amuse Deacon Kane, his affair with a married woman, Meg, a painter with a huge house on top of Peconic Bay, who hustles him out of her bed whenever she thinks her husband might arrive, but otherwise she seems totally uncaring and absent. It isn't a good relationship, but hey, any port in a storm especially if you're a human wreck.

Meanwhile someone is running around abducting male students (18, 19 years of age) and somehow managing to drown them in a way that leaves forensics baffled. Could these deaths be accidental?

Possible Spoilers Ahead--Minor:

The police are beginning to believe that Dunk is behind them. Maybe he's gone right off the deep end. Maybe he's a serial killer with a sexual kink that forces him to re-play the tragedy of his son's drowning by casting older boys in his young son's role as victim. His frequent blackouts leave him without an alibi.

Daniel Judson embodies this mystery within a David Lynch atmosphere of conspiracy, cover-up, immoral doings, and a mysterious giant black man who seems to be watching out for Dunk--or is he trying to kill him? Judson is great at atmosphere, and Eastern Long Island has never been portrayed more creepily.

What I didn't like was the absurd plot, which depends on an extraordinary amount of coincidence. On the one hand there is a criminal mastermind with far too many helpers; on the other hand, there's a good bunch of people whose motivations are just as murky as the killers. I never cared once for Duncan Kane, and on top of everything else Judson really makes women look like monsters. That's his prerogative of course, and it does add to the noir-ish feel of his book, but by the end we all have a different idea of what he imagines the "darkest place" to actually be.

Finally, when the mask is torn off the face of the killer, and the reader can't remember who he is, you're in trouble.

Otherwise a grand read by one of the genre's best technicians.

Daniel Judson made an auspicious debut in 2002, publishing both THE BONE ORCHARD and THE POISONED ROSE to much critical adulation and introducing a hardscrabble private investigator named Mac MacManus. Four years later Judson has returned with THE DARKEST PLACE, and the potential and promise that his previous work simultaneously raised and met are now surpassed.

As its title portends, THE DARKEST PLACE is a journey into the unlit places of the soul, the sordid and unfilled locations to which sane people never so much as glance. Deacon Kane, a visiting lecturer of Humanities at Southampton College, is on a downward spiral due to the accidental drowning of his son and the subsequent breakup of his marriage. Kane is hell-bent on self-destruction, fueling his journey with alcohol while engaging in a pointless and potentially dangerous affair with a local artiste. It is all he can do to make it to his classroom, a task he fails to accomplish more often than not.

Kane's life is further complicated when he finds himself implicated in a series of drowning deaths involving young men in the community. The deaths appear at first to be accidental, occasioned by youthful indiscretion and drunkenness, or perhaps suicide. But when the third drowning involves one of Kane's students, the police begin investigating the lecturer himself, who slowly comes to the realization that he is being deliberately implicated in these deaths.

An enigmatic PI firm tries to help Kane even as it investigates him, but it is ultimately Kane's own penchant for attracting and being attracted to trouble that puts him on a collision course with mortal danger. All the while, Judson's narrative skills propel the reader ever forward while contemporaneously forcing a careful reading. One simply cannot guess what will happen next, and though the event may be heartbreaking, there is simply no way to proceed but toward it. For example, about two-thirds of the way through the book Judson describes an occurrence with excruciatingly painful yet compelling clarity --- so compelling in fact that I honestly believe that if I had been in a burning building while reading it, I would have not moved until I completed the four or so pages over which the event is described. I won't tell you what it is, but it takes place in a parking lot. You'll know it when you get there.

THE DARKEST PLACE is a classic work, oddly evocative of James Crumley's THE LAST GOOD KISS without resembling it in the slightest. Very highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Daniel Judson has taken a classic genre and made it fresh and edgy. The ambiance in this novel is pervasive, not simply suspenseful but truly eerie. With only 2 exceptions, the major players are male, and Judson presents them inch by inch, the painful secrets that each one harbors coming to light with exquisite slowness. Each man is essentially alone in his struggle to cope with despair and guilt, while attempting to stop that most appalling of criminals, the serial killer. Even sex fails to lift the depression for more than a few moments. The mystery woman, Collette, projects yet another dimension into the mix. Judson's terse prose sustains a sense of moodiness, menace, obsession, and, well, darkness.

The audio production of this outstanding novel is [..] Hill, whose reading is subtle and never over-dramatic. Sometimes he sounds like Darren McGavin, who could be understated when he chose to be.

I didn't know anything about this book when I picked it up, but as soon as I started reading I could not put it down!!! I was tense through out the whole thing. One of the best thrillers I have read all year.

Plot exposition has been handled in every prior review. Here is the thing: this is like being back in Millbank and having Peter Straub as your host. Judson can write and what else matters than a good story be told well. Look foward to the sequel in which further layers will be, I am certain, peeled off the onion.

A third body of a young man has washed up on a Hampton beach. The first two were declared death by misadventure but the last is listed as suicide. The family of the third boy, Larry Foster, is devote Catholic and want their son buried without the stigma of suicide so they've hired a PI firm to look into it. On examination, there appears to be serial killer in this resort area. The police focus on creative writing instructor Deacon Kane, whose son drowned a few years earlier and who had the latest victim in his class. This set up comes out fairly quickly and then you just have to keep up with the twists and turns, lies and deceptions -- no one is what they seem and you don't know what to believe.

The central mystery of who is killing these young men and why is almost incidental to the stories of Tommy Miller, Deacon Kane, Armstrong Mercer, and others we meet as we read. Everyone has suffered some loss at one time or another and we all deal with the pain, grief, anger, resentment, and sometimes relief in our own ways. Most of us finally find some reason to go on and others get stuck or play the blame game. Each character is in one way or another dealing with loss in their lives and how they've dealt with it determines how they perceive the events around them and react to them.

Once the body count begins to rise, we need to know that the killer will be found and punished. Understanding the motivations and underlying backstory helps us to try to eliminate one character or another as the killer. However, the narrative cleverly keeps us guessing because while we're given information and much of the scene is from a single point of view, those points of view are colored by the character's inner beliefs and experiences. No one trusts and everyone is suspect until the very end. Even when we reach critical points where we think we know what happened we later find we didn't. This is great writing -- as a reader I love being given all I need and yet still kept in the dark. I found myself doing the 'just one more page' thing until the book was finished.

The setting of the Hamptons area on Long Island is totally new for me and yet I could feel the biting cold and lonely desolation of a tourist area during its off-season. It's a total immersion book -- I hardly noticed the 100+ temps outside while reading.

It's also a cerebral book, the crime is mostly off the page and the intrigue and mystery are what you are reading. Even so it's a dark book that will make you think about the people you meet and what their lives may be like beneath the surface that you see each day.

What's not to dislike.

There is suspense, sadness, sadism, surprise, and sexuality.

There is pungent politiks and poop about authors-professors of a small college literature department.

The reader is entertained--not insulted--that's my bottom-line.

I enjoyed this book. It is a very complex murder mystery. Miller is the son of an ex cop. He has a police scanner down the hall from his room and its starts getting police calls back and forth from another crime team and the station. Miller is working for an outsider that pays him to get information on the newest crimes. He leaves his girlfriend in the house and he goes and checks it out. Deacon Kane is sleeping at his girlfriend's house, Meg. She lives on the beach; the sound of the waves haunts Kane in his sleep, for he lost his son to the ocean. They wake up and she paints and he goes of to work, to find out one have his students has died. The police are trying to cover the story up because the approaching summer is coming and they do not want the murders going around ruining the business.

Kane is driving to the college to look at a small shack outside of the school and is knocked unconscious by Miller. Miller was looking there too, waiting for Kane to show up. Kane is knocked out and taken somewhere. Kane is left a bang in his head and a bad head ache. Colette Auster is one Kane's students. She eventually sees him out of school and she finds out she working at a bar serving drinks. She lives upstairs of the bar and stays under protection and surveillance. Kane is a little suspicious of why she lives up stairs of the bar under protection. They spend the night upstairs and a little action happens. In the morning when they are leaving a car pulls up and the driver starts to strangle Colette. Kane fights him to let her go and the driver kills her. He leaves her body in the parking lot and drives off, while Kane is mourning the loss of Colette. They were thinking of running off, he would quit his job and she would leave suddenly and they would start new lives together. Last Kane finds out the man that has killed her was an old friend of hers and she doesn't have a good terms with him. He follows some leads given to him by Mercer (his employer) and he finds the newest victim that is being held by Miller. There is a struggle and Kane kills Miller. The boy and Kane are going to the hospital. The reason the other killers were never found by police, was that the murders used a form of Chinese water torture, leaving not marks, no prints.