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In Thomas H Cook's intricate, perceptive mystery RED LEAVES, Eric Moore is a man who believes in simple pictures. In his world, as captured in the family photos that he develops at his photo shop, there are family members and strangers, victims and survivors. In living colour, however, his black-and-white world blurs into shades of grey. The trouble starts when Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of Eric's neighbours, disappears from her home on the night when her parents have gone out and left her with Eric's teenage son, Keith. Immediately, Eric's child becomes the prime suspect. And why not? Fifteen-year-old Keith is a loner, a computer geek, and – this is never stated, but subtly implied – a boy who earns his pocket change in the stereotypically feminine industry of home childminding. Soon, Eric begins to suspect his own son – and then to uncover cracks not only in Keith's story, but also in the stories that all members of his family, past and present, have told him. The narrative shifts back and forth between a frame story and a series of flashbacks. In the frame, Eric begins by reminiscing about the day he walked out of his family home, the one he shared with his wife, Meredith, and their son. When? Why? That's the mystery, or one of them, anyway. The flashbacks begin with the evening of Amy Giordano's disappearance. Then – as a photo shop proprietor's memories must – they gain focus, develop, and become increasingly, devastatingly clear. This non-linear time sequence has the effect of absolutely soaking the story in dramatic irony. Amy Giordano's despairing and angry father Vincent sets off one evening two weeks after her disappearance in his greengrocer's van, promising to be "home before the news." He means the evening news program broadcast on television, but Eric looks back through time and searches for another, unintended meaning. Mystery is what results when something important has happened, and people don't know about it when they need to. By constantly revisiting and revising this moment and its double-entendres, Eric and his author ask one of the most difficult questions there is: how do we know that we know what we think that we know? This definitely isn't to say that RED LEAVES is a slow-paced meditation. It's not. I read RED LEAVES all at once. It was that riveting – and for the captivating psychological evolution of the characters as well as the rapid pacing of the increasingly neurotic and haunted Eric's tale. There's a twist that is a bit predictable, especially for those of us who have read Lionel Shriver's WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. But RED LEAVES is a harder, better book. Cook carefully and convincingly shows that people are more complex than snapshots can reveal. That is why RED LEAVES will stay in your mind for a long time.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, June 2006
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