The Other Side of Silence: A Novel of Suspense

By Bill Pronzini

Book Overview

When his wife finally left him and filed for divorce, Rick Fallon put his house up for sale and took the last two weeks of his vacation. Then he loaded his Jeep and drove straight to Death Valley, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802717136
• ISBN13: 9780802717139
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Walker Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.6" x 0.9" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

A Taut Tale of Being a Good Samaritan Who Follows a Twisted Trail

"Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not now it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert." -- Isaiah 43:19 This book is a delight for anyone who loves the desert's many subtle moods and shifts in colors, especially in Death Valley, California. The protagonist, Good Samaritan Rick Fallon, lives to escape from "civilization" to enjoy the relative silence experienced while being on his own in the desert. Everywhere else is, by comparison, the other side of silence. Unexpectedly, Fallon finds a near-dead young woman who isn't happy to be saved. He gradually learns her story: She's searching for her son who has been kidnapped by her ex-husband. While trying to track down a lead, she had been brutalized . . . and gave up hope. Fallon has experience as an MP and in security. He decides that he has an obligation to do something. Step-by-step, he probes the obvious sources to find the ex-husband. At first, he's very careful to follow all the right rules. But gradually, he finds that more is needed. What should he do? Fallon draws on his experience and resources to speed up the search. Leads take him to all sides of the deserts in California . . . and into twists and turns that make for a very challenging mystery. The suspense nicely builds and the fun expands geometrically. It's very engrossing. If you are like me, you won't be able to put the book down. How will the silence be re-established? And on what terms? Enjoy a great book that reminds me favorably of the best of the early Nameless Detective novels.

Suspenseful? Yes.

Everyone needs space, everyone needs their own time. When they don't get it, bad things tend to happen, people just snap. They'll run down the street screaming at the top of their lungs at strangers, or climb up on top of the supermarket and use the lip of the roof as a balance beam. They might even apply for a firearm permit, and then a few weeks later unleash all of their frustration into their trigger finger, pumping round after round, hopefully into a shooting range. The point is that people absolutely require their own time every once in a while. Rick Fallon's wife apparently needed hers pretty badly, her method of letting off steam was to leave him for good. Rick took the opportunity to gain some solitude for himself though, going out to stay in Death Valley, that barren wasteland not 100 miles from the tallest peak in California, and while wandering he stumbles upon someone who needs anything but space. Bill Pronzini's latest thriller, The Other Side of Silence, delivers an addition that doesn't disappoint, very much, to his 70-some-odd book resume. The man is literally a machine, a book factory, but he's a machine that has been imbued with a slight creative touch. He has an A.I., if you will, and this latest addition to his collection is reminiscent of a trip through Death Valley itself-some parts you take pleasure in, some parts are supremely painful or boring, but you have stay vigilant throughout it.

A Great Desert Mystery

Here is another winner from Pronzini. I don't want to give away the plot, but a man goes camping in Death Valley and comes upon a woman lying in the sand. The man, whose son has died, revives the woman and takes her to a motel. He learns that her son has disappeared, and that she tried to kill herself because of it. That should be enough to get you into this super novel that has a satisfying but surprising ending. I would also highly recommend "The Blue Lonesome," by Pronzini. I love the pictures on the covers of both books. Blue Lonesome

A mystery that, while acknowledging the darkness, never succumbs to it

In May 2008, the Mystery Writers of America gave their Grand Master Award to Bill Pronzini. And while he might not be as well known to the general public as such mystery writers as Robert B. Parker and Michael Connelly, fans of the genre know that Pronzini richly deserves the recognition. Since 1971, he has written over 70 novels, including 33 detective stories featuring the "Nameless" San Francisco investigator modeled after Dashiell Hammett's "Continental Op." THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE is his latest stand-alone mystery. And, as true mystery lovers know, any book by Pronzini is well worth the read. Rick Fallon is going through a mid-life crisis when the novel opens. His wife has left him a few years after their only child, a boy, died in an accident. So he retreats to the desert for a few weeks of camping and hiking so that he can "narrow it down." Pronzini writes, "The Valley was a place made for loners. You could share it only with someone who viewed it with the same perspective --- not as the countless miles of coarse dead landscape but as a starkly beautiful wilderness teeming with life. To him, it seemed almost sentient, as if deep within its ancient rock was something that approximated a soul." And indeed, in this novel the desert is a character, the opposite of what Pronzini describes as "traffic clogged freeways, urban blight, random violence...and all the other by products of what was laughingly called modern civilization: global warming, Nine-Eleven and the looming threat of terrorism, the stupid Iraq War." On the second day of his trip he finds an abandoned Toyota Camry containing a woman's purse and a note that reads "I can't go on anymore. There's no hope left..." Fallon soon finds 32-year-old Casey Dunbar at the bottom of a nearby wash, dehydrated, blistered by the merciless sun and close to death. He saves her and soon learns she was beaten, robbed and raped as she sought to get back her eight-year-old son who was kidnapped four months earlier by her ex-husband. So begins our descent into this sun-bleached noir world. Stirred by the picture of Casey's son, Fallon is reminded of his own lost child. He agrees to help Casey find the boy. And, just as with all noir stories, few things are what they seem here and perception is turned upside down and distorted, much as the great Orson Welles did in the famous funhouse mirror scene in the classic film noir The Lady from Shanghai. So Fallon travels from the safety and silence of the desert wilderness to the truly dangerous human wilderness of urban civilization. Pronzini writes: "Fallon had always thought of Vegas as a massive, amoeba-like creature slowly inching its way across the flat desert plane, absorbing more and more of it in little nibbling bites. No head or tail, no intelligence, its only purpose to grow larger, fatter, like the others of its kind that had covered the Los Angeles basin and the Phoenix area and were now swallowing parts of the Mojave desert...Worse of all was

terrific investigative thriller

Since his son's death and the consequential breakup of his marriage, corporate security specialist Rick Fallon is a loner. Thus when he goes camping in the Mohave Desert, he goes by himself. In fact he selects an isolated section of Death Valley so climatically anti-human no one will disturb him. However to his chagrin he is not alone as he finds an abandoned car with a suicide note on it. Frantic Casey Dunbar has given up on life after spending the past few months futilely searching for her eight year old son, abducted by his father, her former husband Court Spicer. Rick finds her and saves her life to her bitterness and outrage. She explains that adding to her frustration and hopelessness is the knowledge her ex spouse couldn't give a sh*t about his offspring; instead his objective is to destroy her, which he has succeeded in doing. Rick offers to investigate; Casey accepts as their encounter in Death Valley brings both back to life. Starring a named detective, THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE is a terrific investigative thriller with a great low-keyed final spin. The cast is fully developed especially Rick and Casey. Although mostly straightforward investigating, fans will fully appreciate the great Bill Pronzini's strong tale. Harriet Klausner