A diffident “cowpoke” with expert backcountry survival skills, he is also a reader, a thinker, a guy who keeps fence-making tools and dynamite in the back of his truck along with volumes of poetry. What holds it all together is the likeable character of Jack. Passages celebrating the canyon’s natural beauty are punctuated by Jack’s sense of something unnatural and claustrophobic at the lodge. But real evil comes from people, who use the wilderness' wide-open spaces to commit and hide crimes. In Heller’s books, nature poses dangers (in “The Guide,” the world outside the lodge is dealing with the spread of a novel virus). Jack’s celebrity client, a singer going under the radar as Alison K, helps Jack - who isn't sure he can trust his own instincts anymore - try to figure out just what is going on. Almost immediately, the vibe is weird: gun-happy neighbors, gates that lock people in as well as out, surveillance cameras in unexpected places. Hoping to center himself by reconnecting with nature, he signs on as a fishing guide at a fancy lodge for the uber-rich tucked away in a remote canyon. The guide of the title is Jack, one of the heroes of Heller’s 2019 “The River.” A few years after that book’s fateful canoe trip through a fire-scorched Canadian wilderness, Jack is now back in his home state of Colorado, suffering from what he likens to PTSD. Speed up for the crime-solving, slow down for the Zen.
0 kommentar(er)
