Orient

Summary (from the publisher): A gripping novel of culture clash and murder: as summer draws to a close, a small Long Island town is gripped by a series of mysterious deaths—and one young man, a loner taken in by a local, tries to piece together the crimes before his own time runs out

Orient is an isolated town on the north fork of Long Island, its future as a historic village newly threatened by the arrival of wealthy transplants from Manhattan—many of them artists. One late summer morning, the body of a local caretaker is found in the open water; the same day, a monstrous animal corpse is found on the beach, presumed a casualty from a nearby research lab. With rumors flying, eyes turn to Mills Chevern—a tumbleweed orphan newly arrived in town from the west with no ties and a hazy history. As the deaths continue and fear in town escalates, Mills is enlisted by Beth, an Orient native in retreat from Manhattan, to help her uncover the truth. With the clock ticking, Mills and Beth struggle to find answers, faced with a killer they may not be able to outsmart.

Rich with character and incident, yet deeply suspenseful, Orient marks the emergence of a novelist of enormous talent.

 

Review: I received an advance reader's edition of this book from HarperCollins.

 

Summer is ending in the small Long Island town of Orient and most of the year round residents are suspicious when one resident brings a foster youth, Mills Chevern, to live in their midst. Right on the heels of Mills' arrival, a local caretaker is found dead, a strange creature washes up on shore, and other residents begin dying mysteriously. Naturally, all eyes look to Mills as the perpetrator. Mills turns to his new friend Beth, a local who has recently returned with her husband after years of living in New York City, to try to solve the mystery behind the killings.

 

I don't read a lot of crime/suspense fiction. However, this one stood out to me because it is amazingly rich with character details in a way that other crime fiction I've read is not. Early in the novel, the perspective shifts throughout various residents of Orient from the uptight mother to the artists down the street. Additionally, the novel is rich in details that are carried throughout the novel. For instance, Beth's husband is described as having "violet, translucent skin. A small purple birthmark the shape of the Hawaiian island stained his left check, as if battery acid had scalded him as a boy. His armpits were ripe Balkan forests. His fingernails were bruised mesa sunsets. His eyes were the color of bullet-scarred housing projects with deep, sunless interiors" (37). Throughout the novel, Beth will reference the shape and appearance of Gavril's Hawaii-shaped tattoo as a barometer of his moods.

 

However, despite being initially impressed, the plot seemed to make less sense over time. A lot of fuss is made over Plum Island, off shore from Orient and supposedly used by the government as a mysterious laboratory. I also had a hard time picturing Beth and Mills becoming close confidants - one is a reluctantly pregnant wife and artist exiled to her former hometown and the other is a teenage foster youth on the run with a history of drug abuse. Although both feel exiled, they don't seem like a match in any other way and I was suspicious that Beth would so absolutely trust Mills when most everyone else believes him to be dangerous. An unlikely friendship, but I can accept it far easier than the twist of the novel's conclusion.

 

The author throws multiple points of suspicion at the reader to add to the suspense - Is Mills the killer? What's happening on Plum Island? What are Luz and Gavril really up to? Did Adam Pruitt concoct this all as a scheme to make profit off of his security systems? Is Lisa, supposedly away at college, secretly plotting with Adam? Like most novels of suspense, the conclusion turns out to be one that the reader never even suspected. In this case, the conclusion seemed highly unlikely, not to mention the fact that it seemed incredibly difficult on the part of the killer to orchestrate. I finished this novel feeling as if I read nearly 600 pages only to be handed a phony explanation behind the murders.

 

Stars: 3