Characters Are Deserted in Desert Places

By June Pulliam

01/17/2005

Crouch, Blake. Desert Places: A Novel of Terror. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004. 280 p.

Blake Crouch's first novel begins with an interesting premise.  Andrew Thomas, a successful crime novelist, receives a mysterious missive directing him to a body of a recently disappeared woman buried on his property.  The note further instructs him to call the number on a note in the corpse's pocket, and not the police, as he is assured that body contains his own blood on it, and he will subsequently be implicated in the crime. Andrew follows the note's directions and is soon reunited with his twin brother Orson, who has been missing for over a decade.

Orson too knows a great deal about gory crimes, since he is now a full blown serial killer. He kidnaps his brother, taking him to his remote western ranch, where he hopes to educate his sibling, and demonstrate that the two aren't completely dissimilar. Orson points out to his brother that they are interested in similar subject matter: "there's something about murder and rage that intrigues you. You embrace that obsession through writing. I embrace it through the act itself. Which is living according to his true nature?" At this point, it seems that the novel can go in two directions.  Direction A would take the plot down a philosophical path, where Orson brings Andrew to truly discover that his own dark imagination really isn't that different from what he himself actually lives when he takes victims. Direction B would make the story into more of a psychological thriller, where Orson is really an aspect of Andrew's personality heretofore unknown to him.  The plot supports either point of view, but I won't tell you which one prevails.

Either of these directions would have been equally fine, as both hold the promise of a potentially interesting character study. Alas, Crouch doesn't take the opportunity to develop the character of his protagonists. We are given only the thinnest of explanations of why Orson is a killer, stemming back to a traumatic incident the brothers shared during childhood involving a neighborhood pedophile. Again, I promise not to give away the plot too much, but we just don't learn enough about this formative incident to learn why one brother would become a full blown killer, while the other sibling, who shares the same DNA and also participated in the traumatic incident, would confine himself to writing about serial killers. Character development is crucial in the serial killer narrative, even ones of the more modern sort, where the killer isn't twisted by a set of circumstances (i.e. castrating shrew of a mother, being raped as a child, etc.), but instead, enjoys killing people for the same reason that other more normal people might enjoy eating chocolate ice cream with pickles. After all, people read these stories as much to understand why someone would be a serial killer as to witness the killers often inventive brutality.

This seems to be due to its action adventure emphasis (although action adventure novels aren't always short on character development).  While I have no problem per se with action adventure, I found this particular brand tedious.  As the novel progresses, there are too many twists and turns. Inevitably, the captive gets the better of his captor and escapes, only to be recaptured again. This happens many times in the course of the novel, and finally, I just don't care anymore.

Blake Crouch's premier novel had great potential, but was ultimately disappointing. According to the book jacket, he is at work on a sequel to Desert Places.  I hope the sequel will tie up some of the loose ends of the first book such as exactly why "murder and rage intrigue" both the killer and his sibling.