Fantastic Read! | Down River

Best Read in a Long Time | Down River | John Hart

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	• Down River John Hart St. Martin's Minotaur, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 75 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Down River

This book was a selection for our local bookclub. The author was so impressive in his writing style that I purchased a previous book by him.

Fantastic Read!

I missed John Hart's debut novel, but I now have it ordered. That's because his Edgar Award winning second novel, DOWN RIVER is - hands down - the best book I've read this year. I picked up the paperback edition last night and sat nailed to my chair until I'd followed the protagonist through a mire of mystery and misery, till I'd solved the last puzzle, and until I'd turned the last page.

On the surface, DOWN RIVER appears to be an unassuming tale with a relatively small cast of characters that even conveys a somewhat familiar tale. Told in first-person, the novel draws the reader into a steely grip that refuses to let go. The world isn't at risk. Millions of people aren't going to die. But Hart makes you care so much about young Adam Chase (and maybe even doubt him a little from time to time), that I'm betting no one else can step away from that book any easier than I could.

Five years ago, twenty-three year old Adam got acquitted of a heinous crime. He was accused of murdering a man about his age, though no one really knew why he did it. However, the key to the case was his stepmother's testimony that she saw him coming home that night covered in blood. He was arrested and charged based on that testimony.

Although Adam protests his innocence, he doesn't tell the readers everything either. In fact, he turns out to be less likeable and more violence-prone than I figured he would be by the end of Chapter 1. I understood why he did what he did, but I know that he didn't have to take the action that he did.

At times, I didn't quite know what to make of young Adam. He claims to have come back home because his lifelong friend Danny Faith called him and asked for help. However, I wasn't made privy to that conversation, and suspicions started to build because there was a lot of his past - especially the last five years - that Adam doesn't talk about. Nor does he want to talk to anyone else about it.

I've been fooled by first-person characters before, so I resolved to keep a careful eye on Adam. In the novel, he can't help but keep meeting trouble head-on.

The relationship with his father is incredibly strained because his father had to choose between believing his wife (Adam's stepmother) or Adam. The choice was made. Even after his acquittal, Adam found no mercy at home. He moved away to New York.

He also left behind a young lover, a woman he was supposed to marry that is now a police detective. She wears her feelings out in the open, the same way she wears her badge. She doesn't cut Adam any slack, and I couldn't blame her for it.

Drawn back to his hometown to find Danny, Adam is surprised when no one knows where he is. The mystery deepens and the stakes grow even higher when Adam discovers that investors want to build a nuclear power plant in town. Land prices skyrocket and every poverty-stricken family in the area is certain they're about the strike it rich.

Except that Adam's dad is holding up the deal. Not only does he not want to sell the land that the developers want, but he's got the primary piece the deal hinges on. No one can move forward without his agreement. And he's not giving it.

With all the pressure from inside the family and inside the community, Adam's stay in town isn't pleasant. Part of him came back to help Danny, but there's another part that admits he's come back to set the record straight and see if he can return.

I loved all this backstory and setup. It sounds like a lot, but Hart weaves everything together to quickly and effortlessly with simple and elegant prose that readers won't notice how much information they're getting until they're deep inside Adam's skin. By that time, it's too late. Hart will have staked out his latest victims.

Hart knows the people of the region he writes about too. The characters are full and natural, with enough individualism that they come to life on the pages. Everyone has their own agenda, and Hart establishes all of that with a few simple brushstrokes as he works on his novelist's canvas. The dialogue is rich and easy to absorb, and it sounds natural to the mental ear.

His descriptions of the natural world, of the forests and river, and the lifestyles of the characters make everything come to life. Mental movies kept playing through my mind. Yet with all of this, Hart still manages to push his story along on a bored-out V-8 engine that demands careful attention.

Danger lurks on every page, but so do the mysteries and secrets. Adam has to go the distance to figure out everything that's going on, and Hart plays fairly with the mystery readers: all the clues are there, in plain sight. I figured everything out just ahead of the story's climax, which is absolutely the best place a mystery reader and put the puzzles together.

I sat engrossed in this novel for hours, and when I was finished, I wished I had another book just like it that I could dive right into. That's the sign of a great writer and a great story. Now I'm anxiously awaiting THE KING OF LIES and will pre-order his third novel as soon as it lists on Amazon.

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Best Read in a Long Time

I am not sure how anyone could not like this book if they are able to appreciate excellent writing, incredible character development, and prose so good that you have to stop to read it twice just to savor it. This is going into the Halmark of my favorite books of all times.

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Down River by John Hart

After reading his first book "King of Lies', I instantly became a John Hart fan. I must say that though 'Down River' was not as page turning as 'King of Lies' it is still a great book that I really enjoyed reading. It also helps that some of the scenery and State (NC) that Hart describes are familiar to me. I look forward to reading more books by John Hart.

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Just okay, nothing more

This book goes a long way around, not to get very far. The plot is thin and rather predictable and it takes a long way to get there with a rather unlikable and immature lead character who isn't that interesting or real. I found myself skimming over the words near the end and looked forward to it being over with just to begin reading something else. What's more, I never believed any of it--not the characters or their predicaments. Sophomoric effort at best.

2008 Edgar Winning Novel Down River.

Everything that shaped him happened near that river?.

Now its banks are filled with lies and greed, shame, and murder?.

John Hart?s debut, The King of Lies, was compelling and lyrical, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, ?There hasn?t been a thriller as showily literate since Scott Turow came along.? Now, in Down River, Hart makes a scorching return to Rowan County, where he drives his characters to the edge, explores the dark side of human nature, and questions the fundamental power of forgiveness.

Adam hase has a violent streak, and not without reason. As a boy, he saw things that no child should see, suffered wounds that cut to the core and scarred thin. The trauma left him passionate and misunderstood---a fighter. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam is hounded out of the only home he?s ever known, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years he disappears, fades into the faceless gray of New York City. Now he?s back and nobody knows why, not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind.

But Adam has his reasons.

Within hours of his return, he is beaten and accosted, confronted by his family and the women he still holds dear. No one knows what to make of Adam?s return, but when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him and Adam again finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life, not just to prove his own innocence, but to reclaim the only life he?s ever wanted.

Bestselling author John Hart holds nothing back as he strips his characters bare. Secrets explode, emotions tear, and more than one person crosses the brink into deadly behavior as he examines the lengths to which people will go for money, family, and revenge.

A powerful, heart-pounding thriller, Down River will haunt your thoughts long after the last page is turned.

Praise for John Hart and The King of Lies

?Treat yourself to something new and truly out of the ordinary.?

---Rocky Mountain News

?A top-notch debut. Hart?s prose is like Raymond Chandler?s, angular and hard.?

--Entertainment Weekly (grade A)

?A gripping performance.?

---People magazine

?A marriage of carefully crafted prose alongside have-to-keep-reading suspense.?

---The Denver Post

?A masterful piece of writing.?

---The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)