I read this book when we first moved up here, because the young author was a recent Dartmouth grad and there were stories about him all over the place.  Supposedly he had asked his parents for $10,000 and a year of room and board so that he could write the book.  Then, upon completion, the movie rights alone sold for millions.  I can't vouch for all of that.

On first reading, I just thought that Smith had taken a decent thriller and lost control of it about three quarters of the way through.  On a snowy New Year's Eve, two brothers & a friend find a plane wreck on a farm in Northern Ohio.  Inside the plane they find a raven pecked corpse and a duffel bag containing $4.4 million.  Hank Mitchell is married (to Sarah) with a child on the way and has a job as an accountant at a local feed store; he wants to notify the authorities.  But his brother Jacob and Jacob's friend, Lou, are ne'er do wells who want to keep the money.  Hank finally agrees but only on the condition that he hold the money, they not tell anyone about the plane, they not divvy the loot up until summer and then only if the coast looks clear and he will burn it if there is any sign of trouble.  Predictably, complications arise.

Surprisingly, noone comes to claim the money and noone finds the plane.  But Jacob and Lou prove increasing unreliable--drinking, gambling and gabbing.  And when Hank and Jacob end up committing murder to cover their trail, Jacob tells Lou about it and Lou promptly tries using his knowledge to extort money from Hank.  Hank and Sarah try figuring out ways to control the other two, but perhaps inevitably, the only solution proves to be killing them.  Having killed three men, including his own brother, Hank ends up committing several other increasingly violent and unnecessary murders as the money recedes into the background and not getting caught becomes the only imperative.  By the end of the book, he is just roaming through a convenience store hacking people to death with a machete.

All of that just seemed a little much the first time around and I still think that Smith loses his grip on the reader in the final quarter of the book.  But on second reading, more prepared for the excesses of the plot and willing to grant them a sort of internal logic, the themes of the story emerged for me and I really liked them.  At it's core, this is a Puritan fable as filtered through the uniquely American lens of noir fiction; the fundamental lesson, that easy money is corrupting:

     Lou: All this money staring you right in the face.  It's the American dream, and you just want to
    walk away from it.

    Hank: You work for the American dream, Lou.  You don't steal it.

Hank ignores this lesson at his own peril and like Cain (he even gets wounded on the forehead) he destroys the brother who never understood the lesson.  This crime, and the subsequent ones, end up ruining his life, but in the end he tells us:

    I feel--despite everything I've done that might make it seem otherwise--human, exactly like everyone
    else.

Of course, he is eminently human, but he stands as a nearly biblical example of what happens when man places himself beyond moral constraints (for an amusing illustration of this, see the grade schooler's review below).

The book is flawed.  Smith, a first time author, was badly served, as are most writers today, by his editor.  But it's, at least, a fun read and maybe an interesting one.  It's well worth a try and the author bears watching.  One hopes he is not a one trick pony.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (C+) Orrin C. Judd

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