Book Review: Abandon
Charlotte Observer
Sep 11, 2009
Abandon
By Blake Crouch.
Minotaur. 401 pages. $25.99.
Blake Crouch hooked me on his grisly mysteries by setting his first two, "Desert Places" and "Locked Doors," at least partly in familiar Carolinas locales. Crouch, a UNC Chapel Hill grad who grew up in Statesville, has relocated his family and his stories to Colorado, so his new book, "Abandon," has only the briefest mention of his home state.
I'm still reading, though, because Crouch did not lose his talent for setting a hook.
Here it's a clever dual story that's set in one Colorado mining town but alternates between the events of 1893, when the "town of a hundred twenty-three souls just up and disappeared on Christmas Day," and 2009, when a small expedition treks into the ghost town for some paranormal photography.
"Abandon" would make an excellent movie, switching back and forth between the plain-but-sturdy homes, saloon and church in 1893 and the same structures rotting to dust in 2009.
We follow Abigail Foster, a New York journalist invited on the expedition by her estranged father, a historian who has studied the historical puzzle of the town that vanished with food still on the table and beer still in the mugs. They join two outdoors guides and a husband-wife team of paranormal photographers.
Crouch sketches the characters rather than delving deeply into them, but it's a vivid sketch and leaves plenty of space for him to paint the setting in beautiful detail. Fans of wilderness hiking and spelunking will enjoy the modern part of the story, which dwells lovingly on the hike in and the cave landscape. Crouch researched the mining camps extensively and throws in lots of period slang that imparts a sepia-toned verisimilitude to the "olden days" part of the story.
A snowstorm strands the hikers, and Abigail soon learns that finding clues to the town's disappearance is not her father's only interest in the ghost town, and that what attracted him there has also lured some unsavory characters who proceed to provide Crouch's trademark viscera. There's no shortage of blood-and-guts in the 1893 plot, either.
Learning the secret of the mass disappearance does nothing to dull the plot, as horror replaces curiosity and keeps you reading to the end.
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