Two Days Gone
Summary:
Thomas Huston, a beloved professor and bestselling author, is something of a local hero in the small Pennsylvania college town where he lives and teaches. So when Huston’s wife and children are found brutally murdered in their home, the community reacts with shock and anger. Huston has also mysteriously disappeared, and suddenly, the town celebrity is suspect number one.
Sergeant Ryan DeMarco has secrets of his own, but he can’t believe that a man he admired, a man he had considered a friend, could be capable of such a crime. Hoping to glean clues about Huston’s mind-set, DeMarco delves into the professor’s notes on his novel-in-progress. Soon, DeMarco doesn’t know who to trust—and the more he uncovers about Huston’s secret life, the more treacherous his search becomes.[summary from https://www.sourcebooks.com/two-days-gone.html]
Group Reviews/Comments:
Thumbs up:
- Slow start but good police procedural. Reasonably good mystery.
- Beautifully written. Detective and author–such tragic characters! I felt really connected to the characters, really felt the tragedies in their lies. The mystery was kind of weak but I liked the police procedural aspects.
- Story was sad, but I liked the ending.
- There were frustrating parts, but overall I liked it.
- Liked how the Huston character saw himself as a character in a novel–how he dealt with the trauma.
Thumbs down:
- Characters derivative; we’ve seen all these characters before, the “troubled soul detective,” the “stripper earning money for school,” etc. Yes, the writing was good, but the ending was easy to guess as soon as one particular character was introduced you knew right away.
- Only thing I liked was the banter between DeMarco and his boss.
- I hated the banter between DeMarco and his boss! Felt totally out of proportion, as if there was a huge backstory we weren’t privy to. Everyone talks about this as a “literary mystery” but those aspects felt completely superfluous to me. Ending was convoluted. Should have ended it sooner, without the extra red herrings and twists that just made it drag on and feeling less and less realistic.
Thumbs in the middle:
- Kind of hard to read, too long for a mystery.
- Long slog until the last 100 pages. I was surprised by some of the twists!
- I liked the police procedural and psychological aspects, but hated the thriller ending. Gratuitous sex scenes, women mostly sex objects.
