Synopses & Reviews
Kentucky resident and writing teacher Lavender plumbs his vocation for material and gets his hooks in deep with this arresting debut set on a generic Midwestern campus.
On the first day of Logic and Reasoning 204, sphinx-like Professor Williams assigns his students the most sinister of logic problems. "There's been a murder," he tells them. "A hypothetical. A potential murder" or so he claims. Their homework is to prevent the killing, in six weeks, of an invented victim called Polly by correlating the slim leads, facts and photographs provided piecemeal by Williams.
Our reluctant detectives are a trio of students, superficially drawn but effective in propelling the narrative forward. Hot-tempered Brian House is given to violent rages after receiving the assignment. Dennis Flaherty, an arrogant frat boy on the surface, is treading emotional water in a clandestine affair with the dean's wife. Inquisitive but prone to crushes, Mary Butler hides her unrequited affection for Dennis by burying her nose in books. The three soon discover secrets behind Williams's assignment. As the multifaceted deception begins to unravel, real danger comes to light. Mary is threatened by the professor's assistant. A police detective recalls the disappearance of an actual young woman whose plight was disturbingly similar to Polly's. At a party at Williams's house, Mary is handed a note that warns, "None of this is real." With superb confidence, Lavender constructs a brilliant fictional web of lies, inventively warping the psychological thriller to fit the confines of a scholarly investigation.
Review
"Obedience is a very scary story set on the border where good meets evil, located in this case in that scariest of places, academia. Taut, twisty, and highly original: the pages turned themselves." Peter Abrahams
Review
"A taut and timely thriller that explores the dark side of academia, where classrooms are dangerous and paranoia abounds." Karin Slaughter
Review
"A taut, clever puzzle, so artfully crafted and tightly wound that it springs open its trap when you least expect it to." Carol Goodman, author of The Sonnet Lover and The Ghost Orchid
Review
"A devilishly inventive debut that reads like a house of mirrors. Nothing is what it seems, right up to the devastating finale." Brian Freeman, author of Stripped
Review
"First-time novelist Lavender has a knack for creepy characters and red herrings, but readers looking for more mainstream suspense may find that the intriguing premise gets slowed down by a lack of pacing and too many literary references to Paul Auster's City of Glass." Library Journal
Synopsis
“With superb confidence, Lavender constructs a brilliant fictional web of lies, inventively warping the psychological thriller to fit the confines of a scholarly investigation.” Kirkus Reviews
When the students in Winchester Universitys Logic and Reasoning 204 arrive for their first day of class, they are greeted not with a syllabus or texts, but with a startling assignment from Professor Williams: Find a hypothetical missing girl named Polly. If after being given a series of clues and details the class has not found her before the end of the term in six weeks, she will be murdered.
At first the students are as intrigued by the premise of their puzzle as they are wary of the strange and slightly creepy Professor Williams. But as they delve deeper into the mystery, they begin to wonder: Is the Polly story simply a logic exercise, designed to teach them rational thinking skills, or could it be something more sinister and dangerous?
The mystery soon takes over the lives of three students as they find disturbing connections between Polly and themselves. Characters that were supposedly fictitious begin to emerge in reality. Soon, the boundary between the classroom assignment and the real world becomes blurredand the students wonder if it is their own lives they are being asked to save.
Synopsis
"With superb confidence, Lavender constructs a brilliant fictional web of lies, inventively warping the psychological thriller to fit the confines of a scholarly investigation." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
“With superb confidence, Lavender constructs a brilliant fictional web of lies, inventively warping the psychological thriller to fit the confines of a scholarly investigation.” —Kirkus Reviews
When the students in Winchester University’s Logic and Reasoning 204 arrive for their first day of class, they are greeted not with a syllabus or texts, but with a startling assignment from Professor Williams: Find a hypothetical missing girl named Polly. If after being given a series of clues and details the class has not found her before the end of the term in six weeks, she will be murdered.
At first the students are as intrigued by the premise of their puzzle as they are wary of the strange and slightly creepy Professor Williams. But as they delve deeper into the mystery, they begin to wonder: Is the Polly story simply a logic exercise, designed to teach them rational thinking skills, or could it be something more sinister and dangerous?
The mystery soon takes over the lives of three students as they find disturbing connections between Polly and themselves. Characters that were supposedly fictitious begin to emerge in reality. Soon, the boundary between the classroom assignment and the real world becomes blurred—and the students wonder if it is their own lives they are being asked to save.
About the Author
Will Lavender is a writing and literature professor and holds an MFA in creative writing from Bard College. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife and children and is currently working on a second novel.