Harvest Season

 

It has happened again, unfortunately. I read the first book in the series The Seasons of Carnage, the book having been Tourist Season. I liked that book well enough to read the second one, Harvest Season. However, I did not get very far with this audiobook. Perhaps the best part was the prologue in which the author warned the reader about the multiple kinds of trauma that would be involved in the story. Really, it was an invitation for voyerism, which of course is a part of the character of this reviewer. Clearly, the author has vast knowledge of those subjects, or at least, a great imagination. 

The story in Harvest Season has to do with the romantic relationship of two serial killers. Admittedly, I did not get very far with the story. While I did not find the two readers to be problematic, the material was just too silly and almost flap stick. There are times when I like wisecracking detectives, but somehow, this story just did not grab me. I felt nothing in common with the primary characters, and I did not care what was going to happen to them. I was only into the book a short way when I chose to abandon the effort, and I'm not interested in reading the third novel that has been promised.

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Tourist Season

 After reading and reviewing 1,835 books in this blog, most of which have been murder mysteries and thrillers, I’d say we’ve never seen a book quite like this one. Brynne Weaver has written about 11 novels, and I read about this book in the New York Times book reviews. She is a best-selling author, and her website recommends that her books be read either in the order of publication, or in the case of her three series, start with the first and read to the end. Tourist Season is the first of two books, the second called Harvest Season, and the series is entitled The Seasons of Carnage Trilogy. 

The novel begins with the tragedy of a driver crashing her car into another, apparently on purpose. Nolan Rhodes was a victim of the accident, and he spent months in a hospital in the course of his recovery. His little brother was killed, and two other friends in the backseat walked away with scratches. But Nolan’s life was turned inside out over the loss of his brother. He got a good look at the driver who fled from the scene and disappeared from law enforcement efforts to bring her to justice. It was the rage he felt about his brother and his own injuries that caused him to pursue the driver, Harper Starling. He spent for years trying to find her until Harper was located in a seaside town, Cape Carnage. Nolan’s anger led to him becoming a serial killer of other thoughtless criminals who had killed innocent people. Harper was already a serial killer who had found the place she wanted to grow old, and it was her intent to both protect the town and to protect her aging mentor, a famous but also elusive serial killer. Then, they were all being hunted by a true crime devotee who was operating a popular website and looking for another big story.

 

Most of the time I was reading this well-designed dark thriller, I felt the humor of Nolan falling madly in love with Harper who he wanted to murder, and Weaver wrote some of the most vivid sex scenes that I’ve ever reviewed. In an important sense, this was absurd. It felt like watching the TV series Dexter although the intensity was doubled, no cubed.

 

This is not great literature, but I was duly entertained, and I do plan to read the second novel in this series.