Chris Culver’s NINE YEARS GONE makes no bones about the immorality of Steve’s past actions (and nor does Steve himself), but in his defense, the guy apparently sort of had it coming. He was the father of Tess, Steve’s then-girlfriend, and he was abusive, murderous and cruel. So Steve helped Tess fake her own death and disappear, and testified against her father to make sure he took the fall. Nine years later, Tess is back, she’s become quite homicidal, teaming up with a hitman/African war criminal and trying to ruin Steve’s life, or possibly make him run away with her; either one, actually.
NINE YEARS GONE starts out like a suburban latter-day noir and ends with some serious suspense. Like Blue Velvet and Hitchcock films, NINE YEARS GONE tries to capture something dark and sinister just beneath the thin facade of everyday living. There’s not much “action,” mind you, mostly suspense. But what suspense it is: once this book gets going, it basically jumps from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, never leaving the reader feeling safe until the (somewhat improbable, but only about as improbable as most thriller endings) ending. And like a good detective novel, it features huge amounts of criminal masterminding and sleuthing. For fans of things like fingerprints, the intricacies of the law, and people playing dangerous games of predator-and-prey, this is a book for you. As the protagonist’s profession suggests, this book is a tribute to the thriller as well as one.
The one actual drawback NINE YEARS GONE could be said to have is its trouble at hitting the reader a little more emotionally, in some passages. There are character deaths that provoke from the narrator some very sober and rational descriptions, when what is really needed here is to drive the impact home: “I wanted to sit down and grieve for the loss of a friend, but I didn’t have time. I knelt down to one knee and reached my hands beneath him. ‘Find out who killed him.’” That said, by the time the threat Tess poses to Steven’s family becomes more and more apparent, the emotional dimension reveals itself much more fully.
Thrilling, disturbing and at times gut-wrenching, NINE YEARS GONE is a fast-paced, tightly executed thriller with little breathing room and a penchant for not being able to be put down for long.
Reviewed by Charles Baker for IndieReader.