A Blind Eye : A Novel (Ford, Gm)
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Description
Rules never much mattered to rogue reporter Frank Corso. So when the Texas police release a warrant with his name on it, he runs. Accompanied by Meg Dougherty, his former lover, Corso heads straight into a furious blizzard and the pair are forced to seek shelter in an abandoned house. But in their isolated retreat, Corso and Meg make a horrific discovery - the grisly remains of Eldred Holmes and his young family. With the police firmly on his tail, Corso begins a murder-hunt that will carry him through a chilling history of terror and bloodshed, and make him the target of a rage-driven master of reinvention..."The term 'page-turner' has been flogged to death, but this is the real deal ...an utterly compelling portrait of murder, madness and the ultimate corruption" - Jonathan Kellerman.
Frank Corso already survived a defrocking by
The New York Times, following his alleged fabrication of a major crime story. Having since re-created himself as a true-crime writer, he can ill afford to have his credibility questioned again. So when, in G.M. Ford's
A Blind Eye, he is subpoenaed to back up his book-selling boast about a Texas high-society murder, Corso disappears into the upper Midwest with his photographer (and former lover), Meg Dougherty--only to stumble onto one of the most horrific stories of his career.
Seeking shelter after an SUV accident in tiny, blizzard-racked Avalon, Wisconsin, Corso discovers the bones of Eldred Holmes and his sons shoved beneath an abandoned barn. Neighbors thought the family had moved away 15 years before; instead, its males had been murdered. Bargaining with Avalon's sheriff to stay free of the Texas authorities, Corso agrees to investigate these killings. The solution may lie with Eldred's wife, Sissy, an exotic seductress whose skeleton isn't among the pile, and whose deliberately obscured--and bloody--trail leads the author and Dougherty to a slain nun in Pennsylvania, a family-destroying fire among isolated hill folk in New York, and a desperate, deadly ambush in northern Michigan. It doesn't take the rangy Corso long to realize that he's dealing with a protean and controlling killer, immune to remorse.
Ford is adept at dribbling out the sort of revelations that build fictional suspense. He enhances that with a mordant wit, oddball secondary players, and a protagonist whose gruffness is infrequently but intriguingly undermined by a warmth born of loyalty. Yet A Blind Eye, for all of its gripping darkness, pales beside its predecessors, Fury and Black River. The super-secret information source to which Corso turns here whenever he loses his quarry's scent is a contrivance beneath Ford's talents. And the assassination of an Avalon deputy, for which Corso is held responsible, is a complication with little purpose and no satisfactions. Fortunately, this book's chilling close makes the whole thing go down easier. --J. Kingston Pierce
Customer Reviews
Fantastic
I won't go into all the details, but this a wonderful series. I hope he keeps up the good work.
2007-11-06
(Richmond, Va.) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
The long, long, long, long, winding road.
I liked it. I am new to the G. M. Ford genre and I look forward to the highly touted "Fury" and "Black River." This novel, "A Blind Eye," was fairly magnetic. While I could 'put it down,' I kept picking it up throughout the weekend. It was a very exciting read.
Ford is an excellent scene painter and I found myself nodding appreciatively over descriptions of cold, icy roads, soot, smell and the like. If they make a movie out of some of his novels, that's where the organ music would come in. Steve Hamilton does this well in his novels about Michigan and Michigan winters but with Ford it's darker and even a little scary. He has that 'hackles rising on the back of your neck' style of the early King.
Corso, the hard guy, and Dougherty, 'The Illustrated Lady,' embark on a mission of investifgation over the accidental discovery of several decade old bones. The bones are accounted for except for one missing girl, Sissy Warwick, a teenager. They identify what is initially the missing corpse and work from there.
What happens is that with each successive identity, the anonymous corpse keeps killing more, almost like a series of Stalinist purges, wiping out an entire family. As Corso and Dougherty get closer, they end up turning the heat up on themselves.
There are a couple of things that didn't fit 'seamlessly' with the pursuit od Sissy Warwick. There are some scenes that seem to be purposeless. The whole reason why Frank is on the run to begin with and the impact of what happens when the Texas Grand Jury's term expires isn't really explained. While some scenes could have been excised, this was one that needed more information. When they're stuck in O'Hare in a snowstrome and Dougherty is higly irritated, you want to know why in greater detail. The whole thing with Sheriff Trask and her Deputy, unnecessary. None of us mind going off in the wrong direction but misdirection from the author just to fill in pages seems pointless.
Then there's the characters Sheriff Trask, Professor Rosen and Warren from the FBI that might have been more significant if time was taken. Either that or ignore them entirely. They become cameo appearances with no script.
The plot, the investigation, the macabre villains, and the energy between Corso and Dougherty is all excellent. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury
2005-11-27
(Ypsilanti, MI United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4
Pretty good, if quirky, mystery
G. M. Ford writes a quirky mystery. His main character, Frank Corso, is a "rogue reporter, successful true crime writer and honorable loner with a dangerous edge." Actually Corso doesn't have a whole lot of depth as a character, but his quirkiness kind of makes up for that. He's one of those guys who more or less stumbles into trouble and then spends a few hundred pages getting out of it . . . usually running into a lot more trouble on the way. Lee Child's Jack Reacher is the epitome of such characters and Ford's Corso doesn't come close, but is still enjoyable.
Here Corso is stuck at O'Hare Airport desperate to be on his way to someplace remote where he won't be found and arrested. Texas is seeking his arrest as a material witness: Corso, it seems, claimed to have some information that he really didn't have. A thin premise, but enough to move on.
He's tricked a former lover / current friend into coming with him. Now they to get out and get out quick. A static weather front has closed O'Hare with heavy snow. So Corso and friend rent a car and take off to Milwaukee. The first of Ford's many inaccuracies soon appear: he has Corso driving more than a hundred miles north and still in Illinos. Cant happen. There are a lot of laughs like this in Ford's book, least among them descriptions of harrowing mountain roads in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has nothing that could be considered a mountain. Such mistakes don't detract from the story, but do add touches of unintended humor.
Anyway, the snows soon make driving impossible as does a turned over pickup truck in the road. Corso's vehicle hits it and slides down a slope (fat chance in Wisconsin). Corso's girlfriend rescues him by dragging him into an abandoned homestead. She salvages wood from an outlying building. When Corso recovers conciousness, he goes out to the building for more wood and - surprise - discovers a neatly wrapped package containing three bodies.
Thus begins the adventure. Rescued from the snow by a snow removal driver, a small-town sherriff makes a deal with Corso. If he promises to clear up this embarassing murder, she will bluff the two Texas Marshalls who have shown up to take Corso to the slammer.
The search is on for a mysterious woman who showed up in this small Wisconsin town (which is difficult to believe exists in Wisconsin), has sex with practically everyone and then suddenly settles down with a homely, reclusive farmer. The trail leads to the mountainfolk of New Jersey and New York. (Bet you didn't know, according to Ford, that these two states have their own strain of truly inbred "hillbillies.")
The factual basis may be weak, but the story is good. Quirky, filled with oddities and many fortunate coincidences, but overall good.
Ford writes a good mystery. Oddball, but eminently readable.
Jerry
2005-09-17
(Evanston, IL USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4
Don't turn A Blind Eye to this gripping mystery
A Blind Eye is G.M. Ford's third book featuring Frank Corso, a disgraced New York Times reporter turned best-selling author of true-crime novels. (Maybe that's a career Jayson Blair should consider.)
As the book opens, Corso and his assistant (and former lover), Meg Dougherty, are on the lam, hiding from a Texas grand jury that wants to ask Corso questions he doesn't have good answers for. In their effort to escape, the pair winds up in a remote location in snowy Wisconsin, where they stumble upon a grisly crime scene.
That discovery leads them onto the trail of a twisted serial killer who preys on entire families, including her own. Don't worry, though; this isn't another lame, exploitive manic-killer book that uses its crimes to titillate. Ford is too classy an author for that. True, the villain is one sick woman, but she's largely in the background while the focus of the story is on Corso.
A Blind Eye is an excellent example of a well written crime novel that tells a straightforward, interesting story without pretensions or cliche. At times it goes off in unnecessary directions (like the killing of a deputy that made no sense at all), but that weakness is a minor one. The gripping suspense and stunning climax make this book well worthwhile.
Reviewed by David Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times
2004-10-20
| Book Critic (davidjmontgomery.com) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4
American Gothic
In an opening sequence as fast-paced and frantic as the prologue to an Indiana Jones movie, true crime writer Frank Corso (trying to avoid appearing before a Grand Jury in Texas as a material witness) and his ex-lover Megan Dougherty drive from snowbound O'Hare airport in the hope of catching a plane from Madison... but they skid on an icy road and take shelter in a long-abandoned farmhouse. Tearing up some floorboards for firewood, they find several buried bodies. The Texans catch up with Corso while he's recovering from the crash in hospital in the small town of Avalon, and Corso makes a deal with the local sheriff: if he solves the murder and helps her win re-election, she'll fight the extradition order for a few days until the Grand Jury case is over.
Corso soon becomes intrigued by the case, then horrified, and continues working to solve it even after the sheriff's deputy is found dead and he's accused of the murder.
Apart from a rather contrived beginning, A Blind Eye is an excellently crafted fast-paced thriller which builds up to a gripping climax, comparable to Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs. Ford makes good use of forensic science (including some rather gruesome details of forensic entomology) as well Corso and Dougherty's knack for extracting the information they need from people and computers, and cunningly weaves in some clues that even Corso misses. There's plenty of action as Corso tries to elude everyone who's trying to catch or kill him, and more than a hint of sexual tension, though most of the sex happens off-stage (if not necessarily off-camera).
Ford is also skilled at creating interesting, often surprising, characters in remarkably few words. His good guys have flaws, and it's difficult not to empathise (at least a little) with his killers as well as most of their victims. His dialogue is sharp, but believable. And like Stephen King or Bruce Springsteen, Ford does an excellent job of portraying slowly-dying rust-belt Smalltown USA, where the cemetery is not only all that remains of an area's history but the closest thing it has to a claim on the future.
Though grim to the point of being gothic, A Blind Eye is a genuinely gripping read that should appeal to all thriller, mystery and horror enthusiasts.
2004-03-07
(Bayswater, WA Australia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4
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