Teasingly erotic, Brooks's first novel is that rarest of sexual thrillers, in which the sex isn't gratuitous but a convincing means to an end. Unfortunately, the book's erotic cover may cause horror/thriller fans to overlook this title on the bookshelf. What begins as a way for Seattle stockbroker Dillon Masters to live out his sexual fetishes turns into a high-stakes game of strategy and deceit, in which the prize is life. The players in this game are fewAincluding Masters, his wife, his mysterious lover (whom he calls the "Dark Lady"), her husband, a detective, a psychiatrist and a lawyer friend of MastersAbut the many extremes each takes to destroy the others are shocking. Midnight phone calls, secret dalliances and dangerous play-acting ensue until Masters realizes he's caught in a complex scam and could be pegged for murder. The novel's final scenes burst with the intensity of a first-rate horror film, and it's difficult to detect a loophole in the intricate plot. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Onyx; First Thus edition (October 10, 2000)
Larry Brooks is the author of five critically-acclaimed thrillers, and the guy behind www.storyfix.com, one of the fastest-growing and most respecting writing sites on the internet.
Brooks' resume reads like a Cheesecake Factory menu, an analogy that honors his favorite restaurant. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon in 1952, he graduated with a degree in marketing communications from Portland State University in 1975, where he attended in the off-season during an unremarkable five-year career as a professional baseball player (he pitched in the Texas Rangers organization).
This led to his first published writing: a magazine article on the life of a minor league pitcher. Still not keen on a writing career - he had his eye on the money back then, like most of the newly graduated- his first lives in a business suit had more than a few more swings and misses. He likes to say he was history's worst stockbroker for the world's largest brokerage firm, then the world's worst personnel manager in a major department store (remember what Dirty Harry said about Personnel managers?), in addition to a couple of other humbling career fliers he chooses to forget. Each abandoned career resulted in another published magazine piece lampooning the experience, and his interest in writing began to emerge as his best - and perhaps last - viable career option.
In 1983 he answered an ad for a "script writer" at a small audio-visual production company - eight arteests and a slide projector. Cut to 1996, when the company was one of the largest marketing and training firms in the western U.S., and Brooks was the executive creative director and a partner, with some 120 employees and a portfolio with more corporate videos, brochures, websites and other useless stuff than Harlequin has romances. He and his partners sold the business in 1999, at which point Brooks took the money and ran toward the career he'd been quietly cultivating on the side for the prior two decades - writing novels and screenplays.
His first published novel, DARKNESS BOUND, was based on one of his original screenplays, featuring - here's a surprise - a stockbroker who hates stockbrokering. It debuted in October 2000, spending three weeks on the USA Today best-seller list. His second novel, PRESSURE POINTS - an ad exec who hates the ad business - appeared to solid reviews in December 2001, with comparable sales. His third novel, SERPENT'S DANCE, was a February 2003 release from Signet paperbacks, and was also well reviewed despite selling like parkas in Pakistan. And his fourth, July 2004's BAIT AND SWITCH , earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, who also named it their lead Editor's Choice for that month, and at year end to two of their lists: Best Overlooked Books of 2004 (the only paperback so named; perhaps, says Larry, a dubious honor) and Best Books of 2004 (lead entry, mass market).
His book on writing - Story Engineering: Understanding the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing - will be published by Writers Digest Books in February 2011. That book leverages the growing audience for his writing-skills website (www.storyfix.com), which explores a fresh and rhetoric-free perspective on writing fiction from a carefully articulated model and plan, rather than the seat-of-the-pants creative chaos so many writers employ. Screenplays for all his books are in various stages of development.
In late 2002, Brooks' script for the adaptation of DARKNESS BOUND was named a finalist in the prestigious Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks who bring you the Oscars. It was one of ten scripts selected out of 6044 submissions, which he hopes you find impressive, especially since he didn't end up winning one of the five Fellowships. He got the t-shirt anyway. Brooks has been developing and teaching writing workshops since the mid-1980s.
He has been named a Mentor by the Oregon Writer's Colony (www.oregonwriterscolony.org), and teaches at writing workshops around the country.
Brooks is very happily married to his wife of nearly fifteen years, Laura, an artist and interior designer, who wants you to know she "is not the Dark Lady" (the villainess from his first novel), though central casting might disagree. He also has a wonderful son, Nelson, who is 19 and a sophomore at USC; three supportive step-children, Tracy, Scott and Kelly; and seven step-grandchildren who have no clue what "Poppy" does for a living. Nor,, says Larry, do they give a rip, as long as he keeps tossing them around at family gatherings. Larry and Laura divide their time between homes in Portland and Scottsdale. He is at work on a new novel, as well as his writing book and the continued growth of his website.
Feel free to contact Larry at his website (www.storyfix.com), or email him at storyfixer@gmail.com, or contact Sons of Liberty Publishing.
Larry Brooks' DARKNESS BOUND could just have easily been called DARK PASSAGE. It is a wonderfully engrossing book. The story takes place in Seattle. The protagonist Dillon Masters has it all: he is movie star handsome, has a beautiful wife, a glamorous job and is the envy of friends and coworkers alike. But all is not right in Dillon's world. Dillon's beautiful wife wants Dillon out of the house so that she can find herself. Exit a sulking Dillon who takes up what he hopes to be a temporary residence at a Residence Inn. Poor Dillon! The last thing Dillon wants to deal with is his crumbling marriage. A day or two later after a rather defining encounter with his wife Karen, Dillon is taking a walk through Nordstrom's, thinking about his marriage when someone catches his eye. ` The woman was so beautiful that it hurt to look at her. She was the Dark Lady, and she was perfect'. A fix to take away the pain of the breakup? ` This was a woman...out of his league. A woman with the promise of a very palpable and unmanageable danger...An evil woman, in a way that men have found irresistible...who acted and dressed the part...to lure the attention of her prey. The realization gave him an incredible amount of satisfaction, the private pleasure that he'd never been able to satisfactorily explain and that no woman in his life had ever understood'. Thus starts Dillon's dark passage into the nether world of sexual fantasy and deviation, murder and betrayal. You read that description of the Dark Lady and you want to say to Dillon: ` be careful of what you ask for because you just might get it'. And while he gets the Dark Lady, the unattainable woman of his darkest dreams, a woman who shares his sexual predilections, he almost doesn't get it. So much of how we see the world is in our heads. As I heard a troubled woman say once: 'My mind is like a gang infested neighborhood. I dare not go there by myself'. When Dillon finally realizes this truth he gives himself a chance agaist the minions of the Dark Lady. Dillon's roller coaster ride has enough twists and turns to keep the most casual reader of mystery fare on the edge of her seat; and, enough tension and drama to keep even the most experienced mystery buff riveted. And just when you think that Dillon is becoming a cliché, the author puts his novel into another gear; and off we go again.
DARKNESS BOUND was well edited and researched and reflects the author's eclectic background. The character development of the main actors was good to excellent. The dialogue was crisp, delightful and intelligent...except at the end when folks started talking too much while holding other folks at bay with loaded pistols in their hands. I have never believed in the TV version of soliloquy when you have the drop on someone. Still it is a vehicle that authors since Shakespeare have used to tie up lose ends; and, it almost works here. Larry Brooks is an excellent writer. I am anxious to read his next outing.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Two generations ago I would enjoy the stories of the master storyteller, Alfred Hitchcock. Be it Psycho, or Vertigo, or Rear Window, or The Birds, each story kept me on the edge of my seat. Now comes author Larry Brooks. And while, Larry, is not yet in Mr Hitchcock's class, I found myself enjoying Darkness Bound in the same way I'd enjoyed my Hitchcock thrillers, two generations ago.
As a best-selling writer of thrillers and mystery, I do understand the amount of skill required and the amount of talent that it takes to bring a great story from manuscript to print. And for those reasons I admire Larry Brooks, and what he has created in his Darkness Bound.
Darkness Bound is the tale of a man, who is caught up in a game of murder. He lured there by a fatally beautiful psycho babe . Bad turns to worse, for the man, as the people he most trusts fall into his morass of lies and deception and then turn against him.
If you are looking for an excellent psychological murder mystery/thriller, go out and buy, Darkness Bound. Read it. This story is bound to lead you from the darkness of bad fiction and into the light of good plot. I look forward to his next book, Pressure Points. Good job Larry. Norm Harris
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
5.0 out of 5 starsYou'll be up all night, reading!, November 15, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Darkness Bound (Paperback)
Once in a while, when you pick up a debut novel, you get lucky! Such is the case with Darkness Bound. Larry Brooks really delivers with fully drawn characters, a few twists and turns and a story that will keep you thinking, long after the last page is read. More psychological than erotic, the suspense keeps the reader on the edge of his seat until, unfortunately, there are no more pages to turn!
This man can write. I look forward to reading Sentinel, and I wonder what Brooks was doing before he decided to write? Whatever it was, I'm glad he finally figured out his calling!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
First Sentence:
The world as he knew it was coming to an end. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Dark Lady, Larry Brooks, Veronica Wallace, Hamilton Wallace, Picki Nicki, Dillon Masters, Benjamin Carmichael, Residence Inn, Detective Rubin, Jordan Chapman, White Plains, Karen Masters, Larry Breaks, Fraser Hotel, Applied Software Technology Systems, Lorry Brooks, Northwest Trek, Puget Sound, Virginia Slims, Neurotronics Technologies, New York, Olympic Hotel, Trish Burke, Seattle Police Department
New! Concordance
|
Text StatsBrowse Sample Pages: Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
