The Comfort of Black

Starred review from June 22, 2015
Hannah Parks, the heroine of Carter’s outstanding paranoid thriller, is the tightly wrapped and semi-alcoholic but nevertheless determinedly happy wife of Dallin, a rising Seattle Internet-security entrepreneur—until Dallin mutters words in his sleep that suggest he’s a sadistic murderer. Then everything falls apart. None of the certainties in Hannah’s life can be trusted: all the people around her are potential traitors, and she isn’t safe anywhere. She even suspects that the personable and ultracompetent man who calls himself Black may have come to her rescue a bit too conveniently. Hannah’s brutal childhood makes her believably vulnerable, and Carter (The Boy in the Woods) is extremely good at creating a series of shattering, Philip K. Dickian revelations that would rock anyone’s personal security. The explanation for all the devious plotting, perhaps inevitably, is somewhat anticlimactic, but readers still will be absorbed by Hannah’s struggle to understand what has been done to her and to re-create a sane life. Agent: Pam Ahearn, Ahearn Agency.

August 1, 2015
Here's a thriller that thrills, a mystery that mystifies. And it confirms your sense that everyone but you knows what's really going on, and your best friend is awaiting the proper time to insert the knife. Hannah Parks had a troubled childhooda brutal father and a mother who died of hopelessnessbut things have smoothed out. Her millionaire husband adores her. So why has he taken to ranting in his sleep about sadistic sex? Shocked, Hannah sneaks a look at his computer files. What she sees is followed by something worse: he catches her looking. They separate and suddenly Hannah is encountering men in black who know a lot about her. Do they wish to help? Why? And why must help involve gunfire, even killing a cop? Midway through, a layer of reality is peeled away and we, along with Hannah, must distrust everything we see. More illusions appear and vanish, until somehow Hannah is reliving her miserable childhood. Revelations in the final pages may strain credulity, but never mind. Getting there is great fun.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)