Tall Oaks (Audible Audio Edition) Chris Whitaker Jeff Harding Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd Books
Download As PDF : Tall Oaks (Audible Audio Edition) Chris Whitaker Jeff Harding Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd Books
This brilliant debut is dark yet hilarious, suspenseful but full of joy.
When three-year-old Harry goes missing, the whole of America turns its attention to one small town. Everyone is eager to help. Everyone is a suspect. Desperate mother Jess' grief is driving her to extreme measures. Newcomer Jared, with an easy charm and a string of broken hearts in his wake is also a suspect. Photographer Jerry is a suspect who is determined to break away from his controlling mother once and for all. And investigating them all is a police chief with a hidden obsession of his own....
In Chris Whitaker's brilliant and original debut novel, missing persons, secret identities and dangerous lies abound in a town as idiosyncratic as its inhabitants.
Tall Oaks (Audible Audio Edition) Chris Whitaker Jeff Harding Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd Books
Tall Oaks is a compelling portrait of small town America. The spine of the story is a police investigation into the disappearance of a little boy, with plenty of false leads and likely suspects. The resolution of the abduction plot is tantalisingly kept till the very end (and came as a jaw dropping surprise, at least to this reader). However, the excitement of the quest for a killer is the icing on the cake. Tall Oaks is an absorbing read because of the characters.Much of the narrative is conveyed through snappy dialogue that conjures up a cast of diverse and believable personalities. Tall Oaks is a small town that is filled with interesting people. The people are interesting because they are drawn whole. Some of the portraits are heartbreaking. The relationship between an overweight bachelor and his unstable mother is described with a sort of relentless tenderness, so that the reader sympathizes with characters who may reasonably be viewed as prime suspects.
The writing is hard-boiled but there are moments when accidental beauty is lyrically evoked, as in: “. . . moonlight colored the streets blue and the sounds of the town died in the humid night.”
Brilliantly-observed, exciting and sometimes very, very funny, Tall Oaks brings a quirky town to life while describing how it comes to terms with death.
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Tall Oaks (Audible Audio Edition) Chris Whitaker Jeff Harding Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd Books Reviews
The character of Manny is just the funniest man – gangster ever. Well a man who wants to be a gangster but his mum thinks its too hot for him to wear the menacing dark clothes. Even in the middle of nowhere there’s a mother telling things like it is.
It’s a belter of a book – a very funny and witty read – It makes you feel every emotion under the (Californian) sun – with the detail of small town America, the quicks and foibles plain to see. Now the reader is the outsider and has to sort the wheat from the chaff as it were to find out the secrets within. But there’s a lot growing in the deep soil of this part of California – even in a town starched with the truth. The heat faded cover is just perfect – for Tall Oaks will frazzle your brain with the witty nature of it all, the dark secrets, the ups and downs and that cheeky reveal.
Oh and I won’t be eating in Pizza Hut anytime soon. Or then again..
Sometimes when a blurb says "Everyone is a suspect" I tend to think that's highly unlikely and there often ends up being only about two suspects. In the case of Tall Oaks, the wonderful debut novel by Chris Whitaker, just about everyone actually is a suspect and that's just how I like my mysteries! Time to put on my biggest detective hat and figure out what happened to three-year-old Harry...and what's Jared..and Henrietta.. and Jerry (just to name a few) hiding? See...secrets.
The book is set in a small California town where everyone knows everyone and a crime like the kidnapping of a small child had previously been unheard of. Needless to say, the close knit town is rocked when three year old Harry is taken from his bed one night. His mother, Jessica, a single mom whose no good husband Michael had left her and Harry, is home at the time and what she sees on the baby monitor when Harry goes missing has left her a terrified, unstable basket case. Luckily, she has the support of Jim who's not only the dogged police detective working tirelessly to find Harry, he's also a friend from high school who, perhaps, would like to be more than friends.
The plot weaves between the downward spiral of Jessica, her hunt for Harry, and the happenings between many others in the small town. We meet Manny, a high schooler who, along with his friend Abe, wants to be the "gangsters" in town and plays the part accordingly with his language ,outfits and "shakedowns" of places like Pizza Hut. Too funny! I have to say, Manny steals the show in this book. He's not your typical teenager by any means, I mean his language is atrocious (i.e. liberal use of the F word) and his goals include being a gangster, but Manny makes no excuses for himself, he loves his mom and his little sister and he'd do anything for them. And then he meets Furat and young love is in store for Manny)
I'd love to go on and on about all the wonderful unique characters in this book but in the interests of keeping this review manageable I'll give you a condensed lowdown. There's Jerry who's got a soul crushing mother and life, Henrietta, who's married to Roger and let's just say there's something quite off about that marriage, Jared, the newcomer to town who's definitely running from something...and that's just a few of the characters you'll get to know and question! I have to mention another of my very favorite characters...French John. He's a baker in town and friends with Manny's mom and I thought his character was extremely witty and funny. See, that's the thing about this book. You would think that an author writing a mystery novel about a missing child couldn't also write characters who were quirky, funny, and endearing and I admit to being skeptical about it myself but Chris Whitaker has done just that and done it in a way that's true to the story. This book really is a 'whodunit' that's at times sad, funny, and endearing.
As you can see, I really enjoyed this story. If there's one critique I have it's that within the chapters , perspectives change abruptly from one person to another with only a small space break and at first I had a hard time keeping the differing perspectives straight as there's many characters and storylines introduced but after the first several chapters when we've met all the characters and gotten a feel for their storylines, I followed everything perfectly fine and didn't notice the quick shifts anymore. As far as what happened to Harry, I thought I had put all my detective skills to use on this one and had it all figured out but it turns out I'm not as good as I thought I was at being a detective.
Tall Oaks is a compelling portrait of small town America. The spine of the story is a police investigation into the disappearance of a little boy, with plenty of false leads and likely suspects. The resolution of the abduction plot is tantalisingly kept till the very end (and came as a jaw dropping surprise, at least to this reader). However, the excitement of the quest for a killer is the icing on the cake. Tall Oaks is an absorbing read because of the characters.
Much of the narrative is conveyed through snappy dialogue that conjures up a cast of diverse and believable personalities. Tall Oaks is a small town that is filled with interesting people. The people are interesting because they are drawn whole. Some of the portraits are heartbreaking. The relationship between an overweight bachelor and his unstable mother is described with a sort of relentless tenderness, so that the reader sympathizes with characters who may reasonably be viewed as prime suspects.
The writing is hard-boiled but there are moments when accidental beauty is lyrically evoked, as in “. . . moonlight colored the streets blue and the sounds of the town died in the humid night.”
Brilliantly-observed, exciting and sometimes very, very funny, Tall Oaks brings a quirky town to life while describing how it comes to terms with death.
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