The Wilderness: A Leslie Stone Novel

Karen Novak has created a nuanced and hauntingly stylized universe for her tour-de-force heroine, Leslie Stone. In "The Wilderness," Novak weaves a stunningly disturbing tale filled with suspense, mystique and spectres of evils past. If you are looking for a book that will devour you as much as you devour it, "The Wilderness" will not leave you disappointed. Clearly, the woman who left the one star review for this amazing book has all of her taste in her mouth.

The Wilderness's plot has been described in the editorial reviews above. The plot is complex, and mystery fans will not be disappointed. However, this book is not just for mystery fans--it's a complex psychological meditation on our ability as a society to see evil. When someone hires a private investigator to find the thing that is missing, he or she is, in essence, asking for help in seeing the thing that cannot be seen. Sometimes, that thing is standing out in the open; it is the client who won't see. And it is that type of willful not seeing that is a theme that runs through Novak's books. Because the first thing that Novak questions is whether it is voluntary blindness or a trick of the eye that keeps us as human beings stuck in darkness. Novak's characters illuminate their own blind spots for us the readers while they remain unable to bring them into autofocus. As with all of us who choose to remain conscious in a world where we might better long for the sweet release of oblivion, Novak's characters circle around their own blind spots as a person might do who is trying to see her own spine by looking over her shoulder. You know it's there and visible to others, but you have to accept that it's part of who you are and forever out of sight.