Two words: Murder. Mystery.
Unf!
Okay, so I’ll be the first to admit, murder mysteries aren’t normally the first thing I go for when I go to a bookstore. It’s not that I have anything against them. It’s moreso that I prefer my murder mysteries in a different medium altogether. Murder whodunits go wonderfully on my television screen. Printed on page, however, it tends to go on just a little too long for my liking. I have a tendency to get bored halfway through and be tempted to just skip to the end to see if my prediction for who killed who is correct or not. It’s like…get it done and over with already!
The Throat was so wonderfully different from what I thought it would be. I had hopes it would be decent—the man wrote a couple books with Stephen King, so it almost had to be—but decent doesn’t quite cover what this experience was. Peter Straub packed a punch with his characters, and managed to keep me guessing for 689 glorious pages.
Any faults in this novel I am willing to assume is from my own misunderstanding. By that, I mean that the book is actually part of a series, and I was unaware of such when I picked it up. I mean, it said so right on the dust jacket, but I kind of just glanced over it before I said “Oh, yeah, this is the next one on the list for sure.” A lot of my books are hand-me-downs. Work with me here.
So, the faults.
- Characters: There was many. Many cops, many witnesses, many fillers. So many characters, in fact, that I had problems keeping them apart from each other. Now, I’m not marking that as a hardcore problem. Like I said, this isn’t his first book following the main character. I could be missing something/confusing some people for others because the reader had a chance to get fully acquainted with them in the first novel. Or there could just be that many people in the novel that I just can’t keep them straight. It’s anyone’s guess at this point, really. But, I’m going to give it the benefit of a doubt.
- Timeline: This is another thing I can’t bring myself to be too harsh about, not because of the benefit of a doubt but because my feelings as I read The Throat changed. It starts with the main character, Tim Underhill, and his childhood, then moves on to him in Vietnam, where it focuses a good chunk of the story. Then it jumps to several years later, when he is a successful writer and gets called back to his hometown. Looking back, I can understand why it was all formatted that way. It becomes clearer as you go, because certain pieces you can only understand if you’ve gone through his past, but for that first portion of the book, I was lost. I didn’t know why any of it mattered or what any of it had to do with the serial killer I was promised an encounter with. When so many people who write stories say that you should start as close to the end as possible, why were we starting from his early childhood? The answer is obvious by now, but it wasn’t then, ya feel me? The short of it: I drug my feet in the beginning waiting to get to a point where it wasn’t a dizzying chore to do so.
- Walter Dragonette: No spoilers. I’ll just say he is super interesting when we first meet him then later on he completely drops off the radar and I’m still confused as to the real part he played in the story. I liked him a lot, and while he was probably meant to be just a minor character, I would have liked to see more of him. Plus, again, the situation with him is iffy as to what happens, and I don’t know if it’s ever fully explained in the book and I missed it, or if, like I said, he wasn’t meant to be anything but filler. I don’t know how to elaborate without spoiling, so I’ll just leave that there.
Okay, enough with the bitching. Mostly because I don’t have much to bitch about. Here’s some of the strongest things I found in The Throat.
- Tim Underhill: Oh, Tim Underhill. How I love thee so. He wasn’t perfect, and that’s my favorite type of main character. His loyalty lies with himself, which is refreshing in its own right. He’s skeptical even of those he considers, or considered at one time, friends. He’s not extraordinary in any way shape or form. He relies on other characters throughout the novel to bring him closer to his end goal: find out who the Blue Rose killer is. And the best part? It’s not even his job to do so. So many stories like this rely on telling it through the eyes of the detective in charge of the case, but Underhill is just a writer. A writer who’s childhood friend’s wife was murdered. A writer, who in all honesty, is there to gather new material for a book. He’s not a bad guy, but he has his own priorities that others would find selfish or even shameful. Which leads me to my next point…
- False leads: More reason to love him is that he doesn’t have the whole thing figured out chapters before the reader does. He’s along for the ride just as much as we are. Just like any other good murder mystery, there are plenty of false leads that Underhill follows whole-heartedly. He believes each false trail, and because he believes it, the reader believes it as well. He gets himself into trouble because he believes he’s doing the right thing, then he learns from his mistakes, and sometimes is at a loss of what to do next. He’ll counsel with colleagues and friends and witnesses until he figures out the next step. There aren’t just a couple of red herrings, either. Peter Straub keeps them coming all the way to the end. It’s a pointing fingers bonanza up in this shiz, and it’s wonderful.
- No such thing as a happy ending: I will not spoil. I will not spoil. I will not spoil. But, what I can say, just as a blanket statement, is that my favorite type of ending in any story is when it’s not all wrapped up in a neat package. I don’t mean ending on a cliffhanger or anything like that. The pieces are all there and loose ends tied up, but the string is frayed and split and burned and the package has been tossed around by FedEx one too many times. The insides are still there, mostly unharmed, but no longer pristine. I’m a firm believer that in real life, there are no happy endings, and this book emulates that. It’s an ending, and it’s a good ending, but it’s not the ending the reader might have wanted. It’s like if you go up to someone who’s really made you mad, who totally has it coming, and you confront them about everything. You think that once it’s out in the open, you’ll feel better, and maybe you do for a minute or two, but once it sinks in, you realize you don’t really feel better at all. They are going to stop doing whatever it was they were doing to make you upset, and that’s good, but you might have said some things you didn’t mean to say, and you can’t take that back. You don’t feel better, and maybe you even feel a little worse than before. Is this the best analogy? Nope, but we’ll roll with it.
TL;DR: The Throat by Peter Straub. 10/10 would recommend. 10/10 would find the rest of the series. 10/10 changed my mind about how I feel about murder mysteries. For real, though. It’s an enjoyable read, and even if these types of books aren’t your forte, I recommend you give it a try. Maayyybe try to find the first book, though. I won’t guarantee it’ll make more sense, but eh, it’d make sense for it to make more sense.
Do you like books about serial killers? What one would you recommend?
Manda Kay Writes 