Tuesday 28 June 2022

“Assumption“ by Percival Everett - review


 “Assumption” by Percival Everett:

As the title suggests rather obviously, Assumption is about making assumptions in criminal investigations where things are not as they seem. It is about how we grew accustomed to the inner logic and dramaturgy of narratives and thus form expectations. On another level It might also be the author’s mild personal refusal to be pigeonholed. One only becomes aware of this, though after having read a couple of his other novels which all are playing with, satirizing or bending the rules of a different genre. If this is the first Everett one reads it stays just what it is, a nice entertaining story.


In this trilogy of interwoven murder mysteries the investigator is the enigmatic Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff in Plata, a fictional county in the northern part of the state. Ogden is an ordinary guy, almost to the point of being dull. He likes fly-fishing and gets along well enough with the town folk and with his sheriff and fellow deputy. Ogden is a cop for want of anything better to do. For him it is just a job but he does it well.


In the first case Ogden investigates the strange murder mystery of a young woman’s mother which leads to other strange casualties. In the second Ogden is lead on a trail of the murder of several prostitutes who rebelled against their pimp. And in the third and ultimately strangest case Ogden follows the murder of one of his friends that leads to a bunch of meth addicts. The ending comes as a surprise and everything to say about it would be a spoiler. Still, it somehow felt anticlimactic.


All in all a nice little set of interwoven stories which twist into a surprising end and as such make a good entertaining tale and a mild reminder to be careful with too much confidence and trust in our acquired sense of how stories should go. 


This has been my sixth novel by Everett in a row, now and I honestly have to admit that I much favour his other novels, most of which have my boundless, absolute admiration. This one here, while not quite a disappointment, did not live up to my expectations (and thus makes one in favour of the authors titular argument).



 #robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

No comments:

Post a Comment

“Old God's Time“ by Sebastian Barry - review

  “Old God's Time” by Sebastian Barry: It is somewhere in the middle of the 1990s in Dalkey at the Irish sea and widower Tom Kettle, f...