Tuesday, May 12, 2015

The Last Talk with Lola Faye


The Last Talk with Lola Faye is a mystery by Thomas H. Cook. I enjoyed his award-winning The Chatham School Affair. I've also read and enjoyed The Fate of Katherine Carr, but I haven't written a blog post on it yet. This one is fascinating, as the story comes out after two people come together and discuss old times over drinks. The past is never the past, and nothing is quite what you thought it was. The book holds out the hope of redemption.

There may be something about sharing a drink that encourages the sharing of confidences. I'm linking this post to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T(ea) Tuesday link gathering.

from the back of the book:
Middling historian Lucas Paige visits St. Louis to give a sparsely attended reading —nothing out of the ordinary. Except among the yawning attendees is someone he did not expect: Lola Faye Gilroy, the “other woman” he has long blamed for his father’s murder decades earlier.

Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink. As one drink turns into several, these two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. Slowly but surely, the hotel bar dissolves around them and they are transported back to the tiny southern town where this defining moment—a violent crime of passion—is turned in the light once more to reveal flaws in the old answers. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesn't know. And what he doesn't know can hurt him. Trapped in an increasingly intense emotional exchange, and with no place to go save back into his own dark past, Luke struggles to gain control of an ever more threatening conversation, to discover why Lola Faye has come and what she is after —before it is too late.
favorite quotes:
"It's the bad stuff you mean to do that matters... That's the stuff you can't get rid of."
...
"Life's about how bad luck can just take over and change everything."
...

Mysterious Reviews closes a positive review with this:
The Last Talk with Lola Faye is a perfectly paced novel in the tradition of a gothic thriller, but also a somewhat demanding one, in that information is not always presented in a linear manner, that, like any extended conversation, often goes off on tangents before returning to the central subject, sometimes in a different place and time … and state of mind.
Kirkus Reviews calls it "An improbable tale slow to gather momentum, but darkly powerful in the end". Publishers Weekly calls it a "tightly coiled, intellectual drama".

13 comments:

  1. OMG, this sounds right up my alley: a thriller where two people just sit and talk and have drinks for the entire book! I see on amazon he is quite prolific. I have downloaded a sample to my Kindle, not that my present reading pace is anything to brag about... Also, I wonder what it would have been like to grow up having a name like Thomas Cook. I once had a boss who shared the same name as a famous comedian´s very silly alter ego - he put an initial in, too. lol

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    1. lol I didn't even think about the name. As an American, I daresay he'd have been older before he realized he shared a name with somebody famous. I've started picking up his books whenever I find them in my local book store. I'm glad there are so many of them.

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  2. Wow. Sitting and enjoying drinks with a friend from the past could be a fun read, but I'm not sure the thriller part would be something I could read right now. Things that go bump in the night are fun, but we've had too many night time tornadoes to deal with this past week (grin).

    Thanks for sharing this tale about drinks and horror with us for T this Tuesday, dear.

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    1. It's not so much a "thriller" as a mystery, and you hear about what happened long after the fact. I didn't find it a stressful read. It is interesting to think what's going on in my life that might look completely different to me if I knew everything.

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  3. I do love a good mystery. I will have to look for this one. Thanks for sharing

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  4. Thank you for the write up on the book, at first I thought you were planning a vacation! LOL Interesting to see something from another point of view, often verydifficult though. Happy t day to you! Annette

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  5. That book sounds fabulous!! I hope it comes out as an Audible book. TFS :D
    Thanks for your comment on Wee Man's post, he says "Très bien, merci" :D

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  6. It sounds like a very tempting book to read but I'm already so behind on books I'd bought awhile ago:) Happy T day!

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  7. This definitely sounds like one I will put on my list. I'm reading a John Saul right now....didn't get to the scary part yet, LOL!

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  8. Sounds like something I would like to read.... if only I could read as fast as I used :) But I"ll keep my eye out for it.

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  9. That sounds like one good read! I'm not going to have any reading time any time soon...but this winter... ;) Happy T-Day! :)

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  10. I'm late, I'm late. I'm glad I didn't miss this post though. The book sounds so interesting. Thanks once again for adding to my library list.

    Darla

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  11. Love reading too but I prefer poetry most of times.Your book sounds interesting and as you said past is more present than we can imagine.

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