The No1 Ethical retailer for Books, CD’s, DVD’s & Games
30 Day Refund Guarantee

Obedience

Obedience

by WillLavender (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2008

    $3.25
Synopsis

At the beginning of the fall term at Winchester University, in rural Indiana - on the first day of class, Professor Williams presents a startling scenario to the students in his Logic and Reasoning 204 course - a young girl has gone missing and the class has until the end of the quarter to find her or she will be murdered. The students believe Williams' tale is nothing more than a logic puzzle, but soon three of them - Mary, Brian and Dennis - stumble upon a real-life, unsolved disappearance that sounds eerily similar to the one Williams described, the case of Deanna Ward, a girl who went missing 20 years earlier and was never found. Each of them becomes obsessed with the two women and the professor, a shadowy figure himself. As the real world and Williams' puzzle begin to merge, the three young people are thrown into a complex and horrifying game of deception. What's real, what's fiction, and how far will the students go to obey authority?'A taut and timely thriller that explores the dark side of academia, where classrooms are dangerous and paranoia abounds' - Karin Slaughter.

$3.25

Save:$13.03 (80%)

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 352
 Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 06 Jun 2008
ISBN 10: 023070011X
ISBN 13: 9780230700116

Media Reviews
Obedience is evidence that crime fiction is hardly a played-out genre .... [G]rafts the world-turned-upside-down suspense of a Harlan Coben thriller to the hall-of-mirrors vertigo of a novel by Paul Auster .... [I]ts ultimate implications continue to spin out in a reader's mind after the final page is turned. -- Wall Street Journal Authentic puzzle mysteries are an endangered species in these hectic times, so it's a genuine, if slightly perverse, kick to follow every byzantine clue in this bizarre game.... If you solve this one without peeking at the last chapter, it's an automatic A. -- New York Times Book Review Obedience is a fiendishly clever thriller, debut or no, and Lavender exhibits deft control at the wheel. --Bookgasm.com Obedience is quite a twisty little number .... the taunting nature of the challenge is irresistible.... -- New York Daily News [T]his is one of those high-concept thrillers with a final twist that upends all expectations, filled with characters who are not what they seem. --Entertainment Weekly Obedience is a full course load of sinister fun. --Salon.com An inspired thriller about cognitive dissonance, conjectural misdirection and the conspicuous dichotomy between academia and the real world. --Kirkus Reviews Will Lavender stuns with this compelling thriller.... The surreal but believable landscape fairly bursts from its confines, goading the reader into finishing just one more page. -- Louisville Courier-Journal It's a terrific book, part cat-and-mouse mystery and part psychological study of group behavior.... [A] wonderful book with a strong emotional punch at theend. -- St. Petersburg Times Lavender's first novel suggests he has a bright future. The novel is briskly plotted with deft narrative. Obedience builds to a swirling conclusion. It becomes a place where morality is blurred and intentions drift astray. -- Tampa Tribune In his tautly strung debut novel, Obedience, literature professor Will Lavender tears a page of out Milgram's notebooks and sets into motion a chain of events that escalates far beyond its intended intellectual exercise. . . . Mystery fans will be satisfied to hang on around the story's hairpin turns as the list of suspects swells and narrows with the unearthing of each clue, but Lavender . . . is aiming at a broader target and posing deeper questions. -- Bookpage First-time novelist Lavender has a knack for creepy characters and red herrings. -- Library Journal First novelist Lavender has sprinkled his text with enough red herrings to feed the Biblical 5,000 but uses them to build page-turning suspense. . . . Lavender's invocation of the notorious Milgram experiment conducted at Yale on obedience to authority adds an additional-and salutary-layer of psychological meaning to his elaborate plot. -- Booklist More Praise for Obedience: Obedience draws you in and never lets go -- and what a ride! --David Baldacci In his dream-like and labyrinthine debut, Will Lavender delivers a clever, intricate page-turner that kept me guessing late into the night. Obedience is a house of mirrors where every corner we turn is a false reflection of the truth until the shocking final scene. A gripping exploration of human nature and all its foibles told inLavender's fresh and original voice, Obedience is not to be missed. --Lisa Unger Obedience is a very scary story set on the border where good meets evil, located in this case in that scariest of places, academia. Taut, twisty, and highly original: the pages turned themselves. --Peter Abrahams A taut and timely thriller that explores the dark side of academia, where classrooms are dangerous and paranoia abounds. --Karin Slaughter A taut, clever puzzle, so artfully crafted and tightly wound that it springs open its trap when you least expect it to. --Carol Goodman, author of The Sonnet Lover and The Ghost Orchid A devilishly inventive debut that reads like a house of mirrors. Nothing is what it seems, right up to the devastating finale. --Brian Freeman, author of Stripped From the Hardcover edition.
Author Bio
Will Lavender lives with his wife and children in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches creative writing at various colleges. Obedience is his first novel.