Instruments of Night [Mass Market Paperback]

Thomas H. Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

Thomas Cook is one of today's most acclaimed writers of psychological thrillers, penning hypnotic tales of forbidden love and devastating secrets. Now he has written an unforgettable novel that weaves one man's tortured life with a deadly mystery that spans five decades....

Riverwood is an artists' community in the Hudson River valley, a serene place where writers can perfect their craft. But for all its beauty and isolation, it was once touched by a terrible crime--the murder of a teenage girl who lived on the estate fifty years ago.  Faye Harrison's killer was never caught--and now her dying mother is desperate to learn the truth about her daughter's murder.

Enter Paul Graves, a writer who draws upon the pain of his own tragic past to write haunting tales of mystery. Graves has been summoned to Riverwood for an unusual assignment: to apply the art of fiction to a crime that was real, and then write a story that will answer the questions that keep Faye's mother from a peaceful death. Just a story. It doesn't have to be true. Or does it?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paul Graves is a crime writer obsessed with a single crime--the murder of his own teenaged sister on their Southern farm almost 40 years before. To work out his guilt and fear, he has created a series of mysteries set at the turn of the century, in which a dedicated detective pursues a fiendish killer called Kessler--the real name of the man who slaughtered his sister. His obsession has made Graves a sad, lonely man, "living thinly, without connections," already preparing to kill himself when he can no longer write his books.

Keeping readers interested in a dark and brooding character like Graves is no easy task, and Thomas H. Cook--who won an Edgar for his superb The Chatham School Affair--needs all his narrative skills to avoid sinking us in a sea of gloom. Invited to Riverwood, a Hudson River Valley estate turned into a writers' retreat, to help solve a 50-year-old mystery involving the death of a young woman, Graves is assisted by a shrewd and sympathetic playwright, Eleanor Stern. Together, they sift through all the clues linking the dead girl to the wealthy family who owned the estate. Old-fashioned detective work plays a large part in discovering what really happened, as well as the too-convenient appearance of files and live witnesses from the period. As for Graves and his disconcerting habit of slipping back into the past at more and more frequent intervals ("You're always imagining things, aren't you? Terrible things," one character says to him), a final revelation about his personal demons turns out to be no surprise at all. Other, more satisfying Cook books available in paperback include Evidence of Blood and Breakheart Hill. --Dick Adler --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Cook's previous novel, The Chatham School Affair (1996), won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. His latest is every bit its equal, a beautifully composed tale with enough plot twists to satisfy even fans who have learned to expect surprises from this talented author. Protagonist Paul Graves is a writer of dark, violent crime novels that feature a sadistic killer, Kessler, his cringing assistant, Sykes, and Slovak, the detective who doggedly pursues these master criminals. Graves sets his stories in turn-of-the-century New York?far enough back in time that he can safely distance himself from the grisly crimes he conjures. But he can't distance himself from the horror that he still feels at the murder of his own sister, committed when he was a child. As the novel begins, Graves is asked to investigate a real murder by Allison Davies, who runs a writer's colony at Riverwood, her family estate in the Hudson River Valley. In 1946, a young girl, Faye Harrison, was murdered there, and the crime has never been solved. The victim's aged mother would like some closure before she dies. Graves agrees to look into the crime in order to keep his own personal demons at bay for a while longer. Cook employs many of the typical conventions of the genre, even resorting to the classic device of timetables. His complex plot is anything but dated, however. He excels in devising harrowing situations that eerily echo Graves's personal tragedy, ultimately delivering another indelibly haunting tale that once again demonstrates that he is among the best in the business.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553578200
• ISBN-13: 978-0553578201
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.6 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #766,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

THOMAS H. COOK was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, in 1947. He has been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories. He received the best novel Edgar for The Chatham School Affair, the Martin Beck Award, the Herodotus Prize for best historical short story, and the Barry for best novel for Red Leaves, and has been nominated for numerous other awards.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cook can write!!!!!, September 7, 2000

By 

Karen Bierman Hirsh (Greenwich, CT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Instruments of Night (Mass Market Paperback)

To those initiates lucky enough to have discovered Thomas H. Cook, it is no surprise that he has won an Edgar, it is more of a surprise that he has not won more. Cook tends to write novels that focus on the inner workings of characters (and the demons they face) as they work on solving a mystery, the original crimes have usually taken place in the past and are still somehow linked to the present.

Cook weaves his narratives so well that you never know what is coming - he leads you where he wants and suddenly the twists and turns set in and by the end of the book, you never know what hit you! Instruments of Night is much like his other novels in that the main character, Paul Graves, is helping to discover the truth about a mystery of the past. Graves is an author who writes a series about a killer named Kessler, his lackey Sykes and the detective that is always in pursuit Slovak, which is set in old New York. Graves is invited up to Riverwood, an artist's retreat, by the owner Alison Davies to look into a murder that happened 30 years earlier.

Davies is looking for closure and as Graves, with the help of the other summer guest Eleanor Stern, delves deeper into murder of young Faye he also must look deep within himself to keep his own demons at bay. Graves must face his past, the death of his parents and the gruesome murder of his sister Gwen, in order to create a plausible story about Faye's death and complete the task that Davies has put before him.

Cook does what he does best in Instruments - he keeps the reader on the edge of their seat and keeps them guessing. I thought I had it all figured out and then WHAMO!!!! A new twist and turn, then I thought I had it wrapped up again and BLAM!!!! Out of no where - I was stunned!

This is what makes Thomas Cook one of the best writers out there. You always know that there are twists and turns but the endings never cease to amaze - and they are always so realistic. He also has Graves imagine different stories throughout the book - and even tho most of them are short - they are so well drawn that the reader can't imagine another possibility. I highly recommend Cook and Instruments of Night.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This darkness is too deep for both writer and reader, June 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Instruments of the Night (Hardcover)

Thomas H. Cook's other novels--I've read all I can--offer a tragic but ultimately humane vision of human fallibility, remorse, and reparation through love and decency. Usually, his main characters are suffering greatly from a wrong in which they somehow participated, through naivete, misunderstanding, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even outright wrongdoing. This novel is no exception, but unfortunately the darkness of past experience is not just too much for the main character in the novel, it's too much for Cook himself. His usual excellence is eclipsed. Literally, something is blocking the light that keeps shining in the world, no matter what evil is done there. There's a truth in what Cook creates--a person who has seen and experienced the horror that haunts the main character, aptly named Graves, is unlikely to be able to recover. Suicidal thinking and self destructive isolation are truly and honestly the frequent resort of people who have been so inhumanly traumatized. What's worrying about this book is that Graves and Cook himself start to seem indistinguishable. Graves's past, his fictional creations, and the case he's working on merge into a single story--and through accidents of writing, Cook seems to reveal that he is merging with all of it himself. At one point Graves INCORRECTLY quotes Tolstoy's famous saying: "Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way," by saying: "All families are unhappy,..." Whose mistake is that? I'm afraid it is Cook's mistake, one that reveals him in so dark a frame of mind that his memory is distorted, his vision as dark and negative as his character's. Clearly his purpose in writing this meditation on a downward spiral was not the putative MAIN plot, which is weak, and reuses plot devices Cook has used more skilfully before. He really intends to get right to the bottom with Graves. It's always a temptation in reading him to feel a confusion between narrator and author, to wonder who really WAS that lost girl with the dark hair and what really WAS the irretrievable moment for which he can't atone. This time, those sources of anguish seem to have overwhelmed the artist's ability to get distance from his own work, or to give us any air or light. I, for one, hope that the novel's last line "Never, no. Never." will be true, and that Mr. Cook will not surrender, and WILL return many more times, with the incandescence of his beautiful prose, to cast the light of simple decency on whatever darkness haunts his characters--or him.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong "archaeomystery" - 4.9 stars, July 18, 2000

By 

Peter A. Kimball (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Instruments of Night (Mass Market Paperback)

I made up the term "archaeomystery" to designate the genre in which Thomas H. Cook is now specializing: mystery novels in which the crime took place 30 or more years ago. In the typical Cook archaeomystery - "The Chatham School Affair," e.g. - there is little or no present-day detection, and the narrative consists of the measured revelation of events to the reader by the involved narrator.

In this variation on the theme, novelist Paul Graves is invited to an estate on the Hudson to "imagine" a solution to the 1946 murder of a 16-year-old girl. Graves is the quasi-Cookish author of a series of novels pitting the impotent Detective Slovak against the sadistic and omnipotent Kessler and his apprentice/slave Sykes. These novels are firmly rooted in the horrible murder of Graves' own sister. The 'revelation' theme is played out in Graves' obsessively guilt-ridden memories of that murder. There is not much mystery to it, but there doesn't have to be.

Meanwhile, Graves joins forces with sympathetic playwright Eleanor Stern to peruse the old files, photos, and reports, many made by the Slovak-ish detective Portman in whose trail they are following. Graves' imaginative talents are about evenly split among reliving his past, reconstructing the day Faye Harrison was strangled, and finishing up his last Slovak/Kessler novel (how can you 'save' the detective who has become just about as weary of life as the author?). The ratio of detective work to brooding atmosphere is high for a Cook novel; the dead ends and twists are handled very well.

Cook's novels often leave you feeling drained after having been masterfully shown the bleakness and pointlessness of life. However, "Instruments" is the most upbeat of Cook's novels, at least in its attempt to rescue the protagonist from isolation and eternal darkness.

In an interview available on the Net somewhere, Cook writes that the hardest part of his writing is the conception of the "surprise" at the end, which he says is "expected" of him by now. In general, this surprise is the least reliable part of Cook's novels. This may be just my own opinion, but I think that too often it depends on someone having done something which the reader has no reason to expect he/she would be psychologically capable of. In "The Chatham School Affair" he got it exactly right, I think; in "Mortal Memory" and "Breakheart Hill", it jars. This is a borderline case. The Explanation almost works, and you can see, leafing back through the novel, how there were clues. But I don't think the clues QUITE bear the weight of the explanation. Furthermore I can't quite make sense of the events that are supposed to have taken place in the critical years. For example (this will make sense only to people who have finished the book), was the chain of ownership of the box publicly known during the War? Wasn't that risky? Does it make sense that so-and-so was really a 'director'? And how and why did Grossman turn up where he did?

Having said this, however, I readily concede that it almost works even in my opinion, and my opinions tend to be very picky and demanding about such things. I give it 4.9 stars, and many will go the extra tenth.