Country: USA
Genre: Thriller (with noir elements)
Pages: 309
Buy it here
It's the third John Rector novel I read in six weeks. So yeah, I really like his novels. They are somewhat of a no man's land in between classic crime fiction and original storyteling. Nobody writes like Rector, hits this particular coldness in their style. Most of it has to do with his self-effacing aesthetic. His writing is so bare and minimalistic, that it has a very strong identity. His first novel THE GROVE had a suffocating atmosphere and a protagonist that you couldn't help love and fear at the same time. THE COLD KISS is hailed by his fans as his best work and the fact it's been optioned for a movie is hard evidence. It was warmly recommended to me by readers I trust, so I kept it for the end. So, what's my verdict, I hear you say. Best Rector novel ever? It's difficult to say. THE COLD KISS isn't as charming as THE GROVE, but the story in itself goes a lot deeper and is a lot more complex.
Nate and Sara are running from somewhat? What? They don't want you to know. The only thing you will learn about it is that Nate is burdened by the death of his younger brother and all the sacrifices he made to give him a decent life. The couple were going to Reno to elope as they met a stranger who offers them five hundred bones to hitch a ride to Omaha. They accept, but they get caught up in a snow storm and forced to crash in a creepy motel. As if it wasn't inconvenient already, the passenger passed away in the car and Nate and Sara found a bag of money on him. Not petty money, but more like the kind of money many human beings would become shitty for. The couple is caught with a huge dilemma, but soon they will be caught with more than that. People for whom money causes no dilemma at all.
THE COLD KISS has a completely different dynamic than THE GROVE, right from the start as one dealt with loneliness and mental health and the other stars a couple, scrambling for a better life than the one they left behind. As Nate's disembodied voice (first person narration) will sometimes remind you of Dexter McCray's from THE GROVE, John Rector, seemingly conscious of that problem, put some distance in between both narrators with the use of his character cast. Nate's a busy guy and he has to define himself against the crowd of dirty people secluded in the roadside motel. He has to deal with the career criminals, the deranged, the random opportunists and with his girlfriend, who's pregnant and more scared than ever for their future. And oh yeah, he has that moral dilemma to play with and decide what kind of person he wants to be.
What I liked about THE COLD KISS is that it's a radically more ambitious project than THE GROVE, which was really perfect for what it was. John Rector didn't sit on his laurels dug deeper within the human consciousness. Nate and Sara are in between two lives and given an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They have to decide if they backtrack into their old pattern and accept the danger or if they will evolved and move on to a stable life. THE COLD KISS is their limbo, where their fate will be decided in a great part by the circumstances and the demons* that lurks nearby. It's a three hundred pages gripping lockdown inside a hellhole. If you enjoy Stephen King, John Rector is a name you want to keep in mind. He writes in a similar style, but he definitively has his own voice and is more geared towards crime than horror. He writes novels that you will devour in two or three sittings.
*Figuratively speaking