"Obedience" Review

 

Obedience

 

by Will Lavender

 

9/10

My Synopsis:

The students of Winchester University are suspicious of the mysterious Professor Williams – especially those in his Logic and Reasoning 204 class.  When presented with a hypothetical mystery and varying clues, they are told to find a missing girl named Polly before the end of the term in six weeks or she will be dead.  But as the clues are revealed and the story unravels, it seems that some of the people and the places are familiar to the students.  Is Polly and her situation really hypothetical or is this some twisted, dangerous exercise in reality?  Are the students paranoid or has something snapped in the mind of their academic leader that has lead him to create an actual murderous mystery for them to solve?  As the lines begin to blur between fiction and the real world, coincidences are abundant and their sanity is questioned.  Will you be able to figure out where Polly is and what has happened to her in enough time?  Will they?

My Opinion:

Imagine careening at 100 miles per hour down a mountainside with twists and turns and no way to stop.  That is what reading “Obedience” by Will Lavender is like.  Chock full of hairpin turns and dizzying twists, just when you think you may have things figured out, you realize you are wrong yet again.  It is suspenseful and full of tension as Mary, Brian and Dennis follow the trail of clues left for them by their Logic and Reasoning professor in an effort to rescue the possibly fictional Polly from the hands of a nameless, faceless murderer/captor.  I like the character development and the plot kept moving at a breakneck speed which I actually liked.  There really wasn’t a dull moment in this novel.  The only thing that kept me from giving this a ten out of ten was that I guessed an aspect of the end and to be honest, at the very, very end it felt a bit forced.  It just seemed that everything turned out just too perfect to be believable.  But up until that last moment, just before all is revealed, I was along for the ride happily with my hands up and my vocal cords screaming.  I was frustrated when the characters were frustrated and confused when the characters were confused.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to yell.  I wanted to shake the crap out of their professor to get some answers out of him.  In the end it was just hard to believe that everything turned out the way it did.  It is hard to review this novel without giving too much away – actually without giving anything away.  All I can say is that I recommend this book when you have time to sit down and just read.  You will read through the entire thing in one sitting without stopping even to sleep.  If not, all of your thoughts between reading passages will be preoccupied by finding Polly yourself.  If I gave out half points, this would be a 9.5 book!  9/10