Customer Reviews

Four Corners of Night

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In Four Corners of Night, Craig Holden creates a convincing world of suspense and fear, hope and heartbreak. The characters are wonderfully written, multifaceted, displaying depth and complexity. As in real life, the characters are not all likeable. Their actions are, at times, reprehensible. As you read you will find yourself questioning the redeeming quality of good deeds. You'll be on the edge of your seat during the final pages. And in the end, you will say, "But did he do it?" This book will haunt you. I've already read it twice, and somehow I'm still not finished. My highest recommendations. Read it!

I enjoyed Four Corners of the Night though at times I found the time sequence somewhat confusing.

The auther cleverly uses two abductions to highlight the relationships of two police detectives Bank Arbour and Mack Steiner who have been life long friends. He uses these events to provide a deeper insight into both their interpersonal relationships and themselves.

The story starts with the second abduction a teenager from below the tracks Tamara Shiply, and compares this to the disappearans ten years before of Bank Arboughs stepdaughter Jamie.

In theory this is a clever construction , to use the second event to explain the first but it is here that the the book looses its fifth star. At times I found the switching back and fourth very confusing and as one reviewer has stated leaves too many loose ends.

There are occasions where Craig Holden really impresses with his writing. His comparison of the police officer and cornered suspect to that of a priest and confessor. He also highlights the impossibility of absolute evidence in conviction.

Another strand concerns the relationship of Banks exwife Sara with both himself and Mack.This is another way of linking these two charecters.

The auther appears to have a relgeous view as other than entertainment, this is a novel of the destructiveness of overbearing love and when it crosses the threshold of possession and abuse. Without giving away the plot after this very compex narritive reaches its climax we realise that both the detectives are both tied to each other by them both having secrets.

To summarise, this is a very complex and rewarding book written by a way above writer in this gendre. The only book to compare is Mercy by David Lindsey. THis is real praise indeed.

Max Steiner and Bank Arbaugh have been friends since elementary school. Now they're both police detectives who come together as partners once again to investigate the kidnapping of a 12-year old girl. However, it's deja vu since Bank's 13-year old adopted daughter had been kidnapped seven years earlier and never been found. Holden deftly interweaves the two cases showing us the similarities and how both men react to them. And when fingerprints found at the earlier crime scene match ones from the new, it leads to some startling revelations.

Very good book. It is well written, suspenseful, thought-provoking, and rich in characterization. It moves along well and throws in some unexpected plot twists. Craig Holden is an excellent writer able to balance the plotting requirements of a good mystery as well as the artful prose of an interesting book. I recommend this book highly to not only mystery lovers but also to those who just want a good read.

This is my second Holden novel, and I liked both. His flaw, if you care about such things, is that he sometimes makes characters serve the purposes of his plot by acting in ways that are hard to believe. But if you can accept that, if you can grant Holden that much license, he rewards you by delivering novels that are rich with complex and believable characters caught in fascinating circumstances. Holden writes for adults who understand the multilayered quality of good and evil in human nature.

Craig Holden creates events and scenes which render one unable to put the book down, whether or not dinner is ready on the stove. I vacillate between anger, frustration and pleasure in the relationship of the two detective friends. The horror of a child's kidnapping is more than I prefer to contend with, but the resolution of this story satisfies my reluctant sensibilities.

Craig gets better with each book and I look forward to many, many more. I have especially enjoyed reading The Four Corners of Night as I was able to walk with the characters through the various locales and revisit them through the author's eyes and words which was quite an interesting trip. While this is fiction, the locale closely resembles Craig's hometown. I know; I'm his very proud mother.

I have read all of Craig Holden's books and, while I loved all of them, I believe this was his best. It is well written and held my interest from beginning to end. What sets this apart from many suspense novels are the insights of the main character into his own behavior and their effect on the people and events in his life. I cared about all the characters and enjoyed the surprises that I didn't see coming. I think Holden is a wonderful author, especially since none of his novels resemble each other. With this one, the last couple of paragraphs were particularly touching and meaningful showing great depth of understanding of human interaction.

This book was neither compelling nor interesting. I couldn't have been moved to care one tiny little bit for any of the characters if the author were personally driving a D9 cat pushing me toward a giant flaming pit of empathy. The character descriptions (which were crucial for setting the atmosphere of the book and by extension the plot) were so dimensionless I had to consult my college physics text to reassure myself I wouldn't be sucked into some accidentally formed black hole. The story? Some girl or two get kidnapped, sort of, and two detectives try to find them, sort of. Despite first impressions to the contrary, it actually took about a third of the book before the plot to appear. Even then, the addition of this limp noodle of a story did little to urge the reader ever onward to some fuzzy shapeless conclusion. What passed for a plot twist was so tortuously unwound that I failed entirely to care one way or the other about it when it was painfully chalk outlined. Don't read this book unless you tend to miss your train or bus stop because the shampoo bottle labels you usually read are so absorbing.

This was the first book I've ever read by Holden, and it was an immense pleasure. It's a story of two cops, both flawed in their own different ways, tracking down a missing child. The twist is that one of the cops had his own child disappear years earlier. The characters in this book are so human, so real, so utterly believable...and the prose is just a dream. Holden writes like a poet, with supreme skill and depth. If you enjoy the literary suspense thrillers of folks like James Lee Burke and the better works of Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, you'll get a kick out of this one. It's got action, it's got heart, and it's a just a damn good read.

After the less than compelling LAST SANCTUARY, Holden returns to the territory he did so well in THE RIVER SORROW. The relationship between our two protagonists here is painstakingly drawn, and evokes feelings of anger, sorrow, and love. The parallelisms between the disappearance of Bank's daughter and the apparent abduction of Tamara are fascinating to unfold. The use of the time shifts is intriguing, although at times a little confusing. But the story is so captivating, you find yourself spellbound by Holden's web. While I can't agree with Sarah's actions, I can understand her motivation. There's always an underlying feeling of what's really going on here that helps the novel move toward it's inevitable climax. A very good psychological thriller.

I was tired of this book by the end, and sure enough, the end was a lot of speechifying and explaining, rather than being experiential. I got confused sometimes with the jumping around between the two "abductions." By the end of the book I really didn't care any more. The so-called "twist" at the end was a bit too out of the blue - frankly, I was dis- appointed. A lot of it was implausible to me. It's like he tried to throw in everything but the kitchen sink - and it sank.

However, some childhood memories with Bank were quite good, and all in all it's a book about fathers and daughters, and lifelong friends. For those things, it worked, and so I held on because it's not a subject men write about too much and I wanted to find out what this author had to say about it.

My favorite character, actually, was Naomi, Max's daughter. She was spunky and gutsy and just weird enough to be a real person. Too bad people have to write "thrillers" to have their books sell. Can't one man just write about a father-daughter relationship, period? Oh, well.

Not a bad book, just not a great one. There were some clunky passages - and some smooth, poetic ones. Uneven.