Detour

by William Wilson

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

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Reviews

[Jordan West · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the cover suggests a Deliverance clone, this can be more accurately described as Shirley Jackson's The Lottery as filtered through The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with Radiohead's 'Burn the Witch' on the soundtrack; a genuinely upsetting reading experience - the banality of evil has rarely been as brutally and casually displayed.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd little book. To start with, it was 154 pages of very small print. There was no chapter names or numbers. It was broken up into three parts, Sunday morning, afternoon and evening. The plot revolves around a town called Woodsend. A backwoods place populated with your basic hillbilly yokels. There major revenue is tourists. They place a Detour sign on the highway to draw them in.

The first third, Sunday Morning of this book introduces us to locals. Some want to turn Woodsend into a thriving metropolis, while some want things to stay status quo. It sometimes borders on comical. There is the sheriff. His brother. Giant dimwitted twins. Shopkeeper, etc. I was starting to wonder why they cited Deliverance on the cover. There was not much of that going on.

Enter Sunday Afternoon. A family rolls into town. Some jokes are made. Things seem to favor the hicks as being slow and naive but funny. In a blink of an eye, mayhem is unleashed. Very violent. No one is spared. Not even the young children. This book took a complete turn so fast that it took me by surprise.

Sunday Evening had a some shocks, but not a whole lot. It kind of went back to the morning parts. The end was a bit of a let down. Not a bad time waster if you can find it.