Ill Will

Starred review from December 5, 2016
For this exceptional and emotionally wrenching novel, Chaon (Await Your Reply) plants the seeds of new manias into the hard, unforgiving ground that will be familiar to his readers. In 1983, when psychologist Dustin Tillman was 13, his mother, father, aunt, and uncle were murdered. Dustin accused his adopted older brother, Rusty, a sadistic kid attracted to Satanism, of the crime, and Rusty was incarcerated. The murders shaped Dustin’s life as much as they did Rusty’s; his Ph.D. dissertation was on Satanic ritual abuse, and he practices hypnotherapy despite its detractors. Now in his early 40s, he’s an ineffectual father of two boys and an oblivious husband to a dying wife in suburban Ohio. Having convinced himself of his vision of the past and clinging only to “memories of happiness,” he’s unnerved to learn that Rusty has been exonerated and released. What he doesn’t know is that Rusty has reached out to Dustin’s youngest, Aaron, a teenage junky sliding into Cleveland’s dangerous underground, urging the boy to talk to Wave, Dustin’s estranged cousin, who may know the truth of the murders. The paths of several characters converge as one of Dustin’s patients convinces him to investigate a spate of drownings and Aaron’s best friend Rabbit is pulled from the river, dead. With impressive skill, across multiple narratives that twine, fracture, and reset, Chaon expertly realizes his singular vision of American dread.

An accomplished team of narrators allows Chaon's dark tale of violence and depravity to transition successfully from print to the audio format. The plot abounds with time, scene, and point-of-view changes, providing the depth and complexity that mystery and thriller fans prize. But that same intricacy requires sharp character differentiation and precise pacing so listeners can follow those plot and character twists. Strong individual performances show this ensemble to be more than equal to the task. Be forewarned: Language and descriptions are graphic as the resurfacing of a thirty-year old mystery reveals that things are never what they seem and memories can't always be trusted. Chaon's offering is complicated and unsettling, but listeners who enjoy a challenge should try this uniquely conceived and masterfully presented literary psycho-thriller. M.O.B. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

July 1, 2017

At 15 hours to find out whodunit (you'll probably guess early), howdunit (you'll need to wait for it), whydunit (well...? no spoilers!), we're talking commitment. A full cast (why don't producers reveal who's who?), including veterans Ari Fliakos and Edoardo Ballerini, with Scott Aiello, Michael Crouch, and Alex McKenna, keep the pace brisk, even as the characters ruminate a bit too long on unnecessary details. Impatience aside, the premise is intriguing: Dustin Tillman, a fortysomething psychologist on suburban cruise control, is jolted by the news that older brother Rusty has been DNA-exonerated from his life sentence after 30 years in prison. Already a troubled teen when the Tillman family adopted him, Rusty was convicted of the gruesome murders of their parents, an aunt, and an uncle--and now he's getting out. Meanwhile, current reports of murder have been haunting Dustin on the job as one of his clients, a former cop, presents a hard-to-ignore theory that a serial killer is targeting college boys. Caught between past and present crimes, Dustin's life heads toward implosion. VERDICT Despite an aurally convincing cast, Chaon's (Among the Missing) latest proves to be more meandering mess than mesmerizing mystery. ["Chaon creates a world of tragedy, disease, and drug abuse right out of today's news and makes it real while keeping readers guessing on many levels": LJ 2/1/17 starred review of the Ballantine hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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