VANISHED, Mary McGarry Morris
I don'
t
know if anyone saw this book as crime fiction 25 years ago.
It's certainly noir and straight out of the Woodrell/Jim Thompson universe. It was nominated for the National Book Award. A laborer is lured into helping an attractive woman he sees on the road. He deserts his family and embarks on an odyssey with Dotty, who is a femme fatale of the highest order. She has kidnapped a baby and the three cobble out a life on the road over the course of the next five years.
Their fate is further complicated when they run into an
ex-con and his family, who come up with the idea of demanding ransom.
This is one dark, often heart-breaking tale, and amazingly Morris' first
novel. Highly recommended. Her other novels aren't bad either
3 comments:
How did I miss seeing this one come out, Patti? It sounds absolutely atmospheric and noir-ishly compelling.
If they didn't, I'd suspect it was due to Paying Rapt Attention to Marketing Labels. "Why is THE MARTIAN science fiction? It doesn't say 'sf' on it anywhere? And it's just about a guy in the near future trying survive a disastrous Mars mission...y'know, like a Whole Lot of other sf over the last century." Or, as one of my favorite overheard judgements went, when one woman held up a copy of the then-new paperback of Tess Gerritsen's GRAVITY for her friend's opinion at a Borders in Philadelphia, the other woman glanced at the cover and said, "That looks like space crap."
Datum that came up the other day...http://barebonesez.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-hitchcock-project-john-cheever-part.html...about Charlotte Armstrong's adaptation of John Cheever's "The Five-Forty-Eight" for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: in 1960...one of two Cheever stories they adapted in that season, along with "O Youth and Beauty!" (Halsted Welles did that script.)
Seems relevant.
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