The Cloud of Unknowing
A Novel
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A “gripping” mystery revolving around a family tragedy, and a woman who may or may not be descending into madness (Entertainment Weekly).
David Sears grew up terrorized by the ravings of his schizophrenic father, a frustrated literary genius who openly preferred David’s sister Diana for her superior intelligence. When the Old Man died, David thought the madness had finally died with him. But the Sears family was not through with its troubles.
The drowning of Diana’s mentally ill son has been ruled a tragic “misadventure,” a conclusion she refuses to accept. After hastily divorcing her husband, she sets out to prove his culpability. Her increasingly manic behavior is becoming hard for David to ignore. He finds himself afraid for his own family’s safety—and choosing his words carefully when answering the detective.
Edgar Award–winning author Thomas H. Cook explores the power of blood to define us, bind us, and sometimes destroy us, in a novel of “consuming suspense almost too concentrated to bear” (New York Daily News).
“So spare and precise, it feels as if it has been chiseled in stone with something like a surgical instrument.” —Joyce Carol Oates
“What’s at stake isn’t so much the resolution of a mystery as the integrity of a family.” —Time Out New York
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jason Regan, a severely schizophrenic child, is found drowned in a pond behind his family's home in this unusual, chilling mystery from Edgar-winner Cook (Red Leaves). Jason's mother, Diana, believes that her ex-husband, Mark, has murdered their son. The story is narrated by Diana's brother, Dave Sears, who comes to believe Diana has gone insane. Dave has good reason to think so; their father was a raving paranoid schizophrenic. Cook employs a curious narrative structure, dividing the story into two alternating sections: one in which Dave is being interviewed by a police detective about an unnamed crime, written in second-person, and another that Dave narrates in first-person. In the beginning it's unclear if a crime occurred at all; the police rule that Jason walked into the pond on his own. Then it appears that there was not only one murder but possibly two, three or even four. Cook reveals all the pieces of the shocking story with an absolutely steady hand. It's a bravura performance.
