Callous

by T.K. Kenyon

The disappearance of an attractive young woman plunges a small Texas town into a frenzy of paranoia and recrimination. With each day Ester remains missing, the accusations and rumors grow wilder and more outrageous. Assistant DA Diane Marshall and her husband, Deputy Max Konstantin, investigate the usual leads, including the unorthodox tenets of Ester's conservative Christian sect and her father’s peculiar business dealings. Mounting forensic evidence and a chilling eyewitness account suggest that Ester is the victim of abduction and satanic ritual murder. When the witness names the deputy sheriff as the murderer, the townspeople reach the brink of hysteria. The labyrinthine plot of this singular crime drama probes themes of faith and prayer, forensic investigation, moral panic, mass delusion, and false memory.

Genres: Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

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Reviews

[Kristine (The Writer's Inkwell) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure I can adequately explain exactly how crappy this book is. In fact, words fail me in this moment because I feel as if the author's stupidity has sucked every last brain cell from me.

Less than a hundred pages in after several days, I promised myself last night that if I made it through another fifty, I would finish the book. I really wish I hadn't pushed myself through those fifty pages, because despite my best efforts, there's no way I could sit down long enough to read this idiotic mix of criminal psychology and ridiculous religious fanaticism. For anyone who dares to read this story, don't waste your time. I can sum up this mess with just a few paragraphs and save you precious brain cells and time.

A young woman's father is called by her best friend when she fails to appear outside the grocery store she works at. The friend claimed Ester never showed at 11 pm and since there were still people in the store, she assumed she was still working. From the moment this call is made, the friend, Vanessa starts proclaiming the lack of physical evidence and how it's apparent Ester has been kidnapped.

Everything that happens from the get go is absurd. For one, it is well known cops will not investigate the disappearance of an adult for several days and yet, somehow the deputy arrives minutes after the father does. Second, the author has no commonsense in her story telling or even in the order in which she does things. For example, the deputy idly thinks about coyotes sneaking drugs and immigrants over the border and then about forty pages later, Kenyon has his wife explain what a coyote is.

Vanessa is clearly involved in Ester's disappearance. From the beginning, she's erratic, pushy and desperate to be in the middle of the investigation. As a so-called "forensic investigator" for the New Orleans Police Department, she spouts of trivial knowledge of serial killers, their MO's and such like it's going out of style. She's clearly obsessed with serial killers and pushes at every chance to mark Ester's disappearance as the latest in a serial killer's list of victims. While I understand why she doesn't initially come under scrutiny, the moment she makes a public statement to the press about Ester being killed by a serial killer, she should have been taken into custody.

Of course, she's not the only absurd woman running around like she knows everything. Diane, Deputy Max's lawyer wife, seems to think she's above the law and knows everything about pretty much everything. She mentally spouts of statistics of children who are abused (both physically and sexually), guesses exactly how many children she comes in contact with are being abused and even proclaims to be an expert at spouting pedophilia grooming habits at first glance. Everything she does in regards to this investigation is illegal and with her gun wielding idiot of a husband at her side, they leave a path of destruction and mayhem in their wake. First she interviews a teenage girl, P.J., several times without the consent of her parents. Then she accuses the parents of molesting the children, which leads to her husband barreling in, guns blazing and destroying an odd, but mostly harmless family environment. Uber religious and with the aid of her preacher, she coerces a confession of Satanism, rape and murder from the poor girl after hounding her for days to remember more. Thus proving, that like Vanessa, Diane, Max and Preacher Daniel should all be jailed for their parts in tearing this community apart at the seams and for the latter three, accomplishes to child abuse and murder.

This is to say nothing to the war that comes as the Church discovers Ester's father is selling his cattle to the Jews and how it will lead to the end of days. Which I won't even dare to go into, as this is clearly the section I skimmed over in order to find out for sure Vanessa murdered Ester and P.J.

Now if any of that sounds like a good book, by means, go ahead and waste your time. But for those of us who like a bit of common sense and a bit structure in our literature, avoid this book like it's the plague. I'd even opt to having a book burning party to rid the world of every copy of this failed experiment in writing. This author needs to get a new job.

[mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A preface; Been reading a lot lately, whist kitten sitten, in this SoCal enclosure smack in the middle of the Inland Empire, where it is too hot to be outdoors, and the economic crisis (my own personal crisis) limits my mobility and fun seeking distractions. I like to read contemporary fiction and this last week I read three novels: CALLOUS, by T.K. Kenyon; HOUSE AND HOME, by Kathleen McCleary; and SNUFF, by Chuck Palahniuk. They all feature sex and relationships, which are in and of themselves—timeless attractions that, here in the Twenty-first Century, manifest themselves in a post-modern sort of way.

CALLOUS is about persons becoming unfeeling, or are they born that way? At best, it’s a frivolous page-turner. Woven within the pages the author lectures about: Missing children; Child sexual abuse; Child protective services; International adoption; The Criminal justice system; The Internet and Social networking; Law enforcement; Publishing; The Media; Murder; Cults; Religious fundamentalism; Drug addiction; Terrorism; Pornography; The Hero complex; Groupthink; Small towns; Imprinting; Physics; Chemistry; Genetic engineering; Cows; Cats; and Free Will. Just who is saying or thinking what is hard to discern. I think that’s called voice and point of view. There is disagreeableness about all the characters, an overall sense of hostility, and a pervasive loneliness. But in the end … Love conquers all. Sorry T.K. the story just doesn’t work. Her first novel, RABID, I thought was fantastic. CALLOUS doesn’t measure up. I think it’s biology, genetics, probability or something—regression to the mean. Three stars.