Title: Silence on Cold River Author: Casey Dunn
Published: May 5, 2020
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller
Page Count: 304
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:On a run through the woods outside her north Georgia hometown, defense attorney Ama Chaplin encounters a mysterious hiker and recognizes him, too late, as a sociopath she successfully defended when he was a teenager. In the intervening seventeen years, Ama changed her name and moved to Atlanta, anxious to put her past behind her. Michael Walton, her young client, grew into a ruthless and inventive murderer. And now that he’s caught her, he can put a twisted, years-in-the-making plot into motion.
Neither of them knows that someone else saw her go into the woods alone: Eddie Stevens, whose daughter Hazel vanished on the same spot a year ago. The police think she ran away. Eddie believes the truth is much worse. Grieving and desperate, he’d planned to kill himself to return attention to his daughter’s cold case, but he can’t shake the feeling that something happened to Ama, the runner he saw disappear into the trees. When she doesn’t come back out, he heads into the woods with a loaded gun to check on her.
Meanwhile, the local police department’s newest detective connects the dots between two cold cases and begins to suspect he’s dealing with a serial killer—but time is running out to save Ama, and he’ll need to make some unlikely allies to face down the dangers lurking in the woods.
Told in 5 alternating perspectives, Silence on Cold River is an ambitious, tropey thriller that lacks complexity, particularly in characterization. Basically, it’s not good. (Also, the author doesn’t know squat about lawyers.)
That being said, I do think this book will cater to certain readers. It’s fast-paced, with decent twists and consistent tension. The characters all have big personalities and familiar (dare I say cliche) flaws. Without at all poo-pooing potential readers: Silence on Cold River is mindless fun. And we all need some of that. I get mine from vaguely racist/misogynistic whitebread romance novels; others may get that fun from books about deranged serial killers with mommy issues. It takes all kinds.
Yet entertainment value aside…Silence on Cold River is pretty bad. Let’s look at the “main” protagonists (as mentioned, there are 5 narrators in this book, which is about 3 too many.)
First, we have the killer: a delusional torturer whose issues all stem from years of systematic abuse at his mother’s hands. Not only is this misogynistic, it’s a tired trope, and Casey Dunn doesn’t even attempt to make this aspect of the plot exciting or fresh. The killer was warped by mommy dearest, and he now feels misunderstood; he thinks that his “art” (AKA torture) will someday make him famous and prove his mom was wrong about how worthless he is.
How many times have we seen a character like this? Boring.
Then we have the killer’s nemesis-slash-muse: an extremely famous defense attorney who is haunted by the fact that she regularly lets guilty people walk free. Firstly, what the fuck? If you go talk to an actual defense attorney, they’ll tell you that they DO NOT CARE whether their client is guilty. It is literally IRRELEVANT to their practice of law. But, naturally, this character is very bothered by this. She’s a closet alcoholic (of course). Also, she went into defense because her father was “falsely” sent to prison as a fall guy for a crime organization that trafficked drugs and little girls. Gonna bet he wasn’t that innocent, but okay, sure. This character was annoying and unrealistic in the extreme
There are some other characters, the most important being a drug-addicted police officer who’s divorced, bitter, and obsessed with a particular cold case. Definitely seen him before.
The “thrilling” plot of this book was more or less stupid. Entertaining, but stupid. The lawyer character decides to confront the serial killer on her own, in spite of the fact that she’s injured and has no idea what she’s doing. She didn’t even bring a gun to this meet-up. It seems that her plan was to find the guy, convince him to take her back to his Murder Lair…and then what? Hope that the police (who she did not consult with prior to this feat of idiocy!!) would track her GPS device quicker than the villain could send her to the never-ending dirt nap?
Seriously???
Casey Dunn’s writing itself is…okay. She relies a lot on overused cliches and metaphors, which tended to make the story feel very amateurish. (Think “airing dirty laundry,” “bigger they are, the harder they fall,” “skating on thin ice,” etc.) Not great writing, but not horrific.
But to return back to lawyering. I practice criminal law. Casey Dunn clearly does not. Silence on Cold River relies a lot on common stereotypes surrounding the US criminal justice system in general and the personas of defense attorneys in particular. They’re familiar portrayals, but they’re not realistic.
Honestly, the book lost me the second Casey Dunn told her readers that an defense attorney’s job was to “provide the most thorough defense money could buy so if the defendant was found guilty, there would be no room or cause for an appeal.”
Um…???
That…that shows such a complete misunderstanding the purpose of criminal appeals, it caused me to question all of Dunn’s credibility. A defense attorney’s job is to provide the most thorough defense money can buy and preserve issues during the trial stage so that there will be a clean record on appeal. Like??? If you’re found guilty of a crime, you don’t just throw up your hands and say “oh well, guess my trial attorney covered everything, so I’ll just sit in prison now…” NOOOOOOO. Appeal that shit and hope your trial counsel was competent enough for the reviewing court to have something to work with.
Jesus fuck.
Anyways. Yeah, don’t write lawyer characters if you don’t understand how the game works.
Same goes for the police characters violating people’s constitutional rights in the middle section of the book, but you know, whatever. (They had a suspect that they didn’t want to arrest due to lack of evidence, so they just…locked him in a spare office in the precinct while they did more investigating??? Also, this is rural Georgia, and the suspect is Black. WTF.)
Overall, Silence on Cold River felt like an episode of your typical, highly sensationalized crime show. There was no subtlety whatsoever, and realism was sacrificed to make space for whatever would make the most dramatic, flashy impact on readers. As I’ve said several times: this book was entertained while it lasted, but to my eyes, it was very far from even a basic definition of “good quality” fiction.
