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Title: A Blind Eye : A Novel by G.M. Ford ISBN: 0-380-97875-X Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: On the trail of a twisted killer.
Comment: "A Blind Eye," by G. M. Ford, features the tough and taciturn Frank Corso, a true crime writer who is on the lam. Corso is wanted in Texas as a material witness, and he decides to lie low until the warrant for his arrest expires. Along with his former lover, photojournalist Meg Dougherty, Frank gets into an accident on a Wisconsin highway during a heavy blizzard. When Dougherty and Corso take shelter in an abandoned house, they discover the grisly remains of a murdered family.
Corso is manipulated by the local sheriff into investigating this crime, which leads him to several states in his pursuit of a very unusual serial killer. "A Blind Eye" explores the pathological side of human nature, especially the way in which horribly abused children sometimes grow into deeply disturbed and violent adults.
Corso is a terrific character. He is strong, courageous, and eerily intuitive, and his girlfriend, Meg Dougherty, is gutsy and tenacious. The secondary characters are also well-drawn. G. M. Ford's plot is intricate and engrossing, and he ratchets up the tension to an agonizing level prior to the hair-raising and electrifying finale. "A Blind Eye" is a powerful and unsettling thriller that may give you nightmares.
Rating: 4
Summary: Snowblind and snowjobbed
Comment: Setting your mysteries in Seattle (one of my favourite cities) is not the way to keep me as a reader, but it will certainly help get me started. Thankfully, G.M. Ford has a way with writing that will always keep me around. His Leo Waterman mysteries were first-rate, and his Frank Corso books have kept his string of winning novels alive. A Blind Eye continues this, as Ford creates a page-turner that will keep any hard-boiled detective fan glued to the text.
True Crime author and disgraced newspaper reporter Frank Corso is having a bad day. He's stuck in Chicago's O'Hare airport, snowed in and stranded, with an irate Meg Dougherty (former lover and one real friend) along for the ride. Why is Meg irate? Because Frank never bothered to tell her that the reason for the "story" they are pursuing is really because two Texas rangers have a warrant for his arrest. Stuck in an airport, his picture showing up on CNN and security starting to look at him strangely, Corso drags Meg on an ill-considered car ride into Wisconsin, where icy roads send them to the bottom of a ravine. What they discover there will bring more than just Texas law enforcement down on his head. It will involve them in a cross-country trip on the trail of a serial killer uncaught for over 30 years. It also, of course, makes him a target.
A Blind Eye takes Corso out of his familiar Seattle, and I think it stretched Ford's writing talent as well. Seattle and western Washington has always been a cozy location for him in which to write, with familiar territory and landmarks making identification easier. This one starts out in Chicago, goes to southern Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and the wilds of the New Jersey mountains. Removed from his familiar environs, Ford has to work a little bit harder, and he does a great job. Some of it is a bit stereotypical (I'm from Iowa, and he captures it decently, but not wonderfully), but overall it shows that he did some research on his locales. Removing Corso and Dougherty from the northwest also allows him to broaden their characters as well. Seeing them on the run presents a different side of them, how they react when desperation hits. Usually, we see our heroes chasing the bad guys, not the other way around.
The relationship between Dougherty and Corso crackles with energy. They used to be lovers and have now become the best of friends. Dougherty is extremely annoyed with Corso, but she goes along with him anyway. She obviously still loves him to put up with all that he puts her through. In fact, their relationship goes through an even more pronounced change in A Blind Eye, evolving as they are forced together by circumstances. That's one thing I love about Ford's writing: the characters are always open to change and growth. While it certainly is not necessary to read the books in order, things change enough that you are rewarded for doing so. This makes both of them even deeper characters then most genre detectives.
The minor characters are given just enough depth to be believable while not overshadowing the protagonists. The sheriff of the Wisconsin town is predictably overwhelmed by having all of the media attention centered on her, along with a gloryhound deputy who's gunning for her job. This situation actually ends up being important, driving some of the action despite the fact that it's not center-stage. This is a bit distracting from the main plot, but it's not critical. Most of the rest get little, if any, development, but their suitably quirky and/or malevolent to serve their roles. The one exception to this isn't obvious until the end, however. In between some of the chapters are entries from a journal whose author is unrevealed. As the book goes on, it becomes clearer and actually adds to the horror of what is happening, as we realize that the cycle of violence may not be ending like we thought it would.
There are only a couple of faults with this book. The first is the fact that there are some superfluous scenes in the book that seem to be included just to show us how tough Corso is. Regular readers already know how tough he is, and subsequent events in the book show this to new readers. Unless Ford is just trying to show us what our rights are during a traffic stop, I see no point to them. While this is forgivable, the second problem is far more damning.
The book posits the existence of a super-secret organization that journalists and others can use to get information that is otherwise unobtainable (at least in a timely manner). This organization is so secret that they will not accept any new queries from a phone number they don't have on file, and any such calls require that the phone be disposed of as soon as the call is completed. The presentation of this organization screams PLOT DEVELOPMENT every time Corso uses it, bringing me out of the narrative. It results in a couple of funny scenes (especially when Corso has to use Meg's phone for a question), but overall it's just distracting.
Overall, A Blind Eye is a wonderful page-turner. It's not a taxing read, in fact it's perfect for Sunday afternoons or beach reading. If you like your mysteries with great characters who grow and change, the Frank Corso books are definitely for you. You don't even have very many to catch up on. Whatever you do, though, check this one out.
David Roy
Rating: 4
Summary: American Gothic
Comment: In an opening sequence as fast-paced and frantic as the prologue to an Indiana Jones movie, true crime writer Frank Corso (trying to avoid appearing before a Grand Jury in Texas as a material witness) and his ex-lover Megan Dougherty drive from snowbound O'Hare airport in the hope of catching a plane from Madison... but they skid on an icy road and take shelter in a long-abandoned farmhouse. Tearing up some floorboards for firewood, they find several buried bodies. The Texans catch up with Corso while he's recovering from the crash in hospital in the small town of Avalon, and Corso makes a deal with the local sheriff: if he solves the murder and helps her win re-election, she'll fight the extradition order for a few days until the Grand Jury case is over.
Corso soon becomes intrigued by the case, then horrified, and continues working to solve it even after the sheriff's deputy is found dead and he's accused of the murder.
Apart from a rather contrived beginning, A Blind Eye is an excellently crafted fast-paced thriller which builds up to a gripping climax, comparable to Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs. Ford makes good use of forensic science (including some rather gruesome details of forensic entomology) as well Corso and Dougherty's knack for extracting the information they need from people and computers, and cunningly weaves in some clues that even Corso misses. There's plenty of action as Corso tries to elude everyone who's trying to catch or kill him, and more than a hint of sexual tension, though most of the sex happens off-stage (if not necessarily off-camera).
Ford is also skilled at creating interesting, often surprising, characters in remarkably few words. His good guys have flaws, and it's difficult not to empathise (at least a little) with his killers as well as most of their victims. His dialogue is sharp, but believable. And like Stephen King or Bruce Springsteen, Ford does an excellent job of portraying slowly-dying rust-belt Smalltown USA, where the cemetery is not only all that remains of an area's history but the closest thing it has to a claim on the future.
Though grim to the point of being gothic, A Blind Eye is a genuinely gripping read that should appeal to all thriller, mystery and horror enthusiasts.
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