Dominance: A Novel

1 rating: 1.0

A book

"The self-reflective process of literary criticism known as 'deconstructing the text' becomes a diabolical game of murder inDominance, an academic mystery by Will Lavender that gleefully illustrates the dangers of losing yourself in a book. . . . Lavender … see full wiki

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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Absorbing, But Weak Ending

Oct 25, 2011

by JanetBoyer
posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More

Rating:

This mystery had me absorbed until the end. Part Silence of the Lambs part And Then There Were None, I loved the uncertainty of who was the "good guy" (and bad guys or girls)...and who was capable of murder.

However, I felt the ending was weak. I suspected part of the ending, but there's another part that's unexplained and muddled (for example, who would use one of the student's midlist novels to start a new "Procedure"? Why bother?).

Admittedly, the plot is a stretch: lit types, nationwide, would engaging in spontaneous role-playing games to test would-be scholars (students) of an enigmatic author (Paul Fallows). If you failed to play the scene from the book on cue, you were suddenly "cast out" of the Fallows scholars (like, how would they keep track?).

An ambitious, twisty book with solid prose, Dominance just got a bit too knotty (and unbelievable) at the end for me to call this a great book. With some tweaking, it may have been...

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