80. In Search of Mercy - Michael Ayoob

Minotaur Books, 2010
HC $24.99 TPPL
293 pgs.
for: adults
rating: now that's a good question. The ending just sucked. So.....3?

Modern day Pittsburgh, PA. The story is told in the first person by Dexter Bolzjak,a young man still living a brutal part of his past over and over. An unusual loner with few friends, he spent most of his youth watching gruesome videos and trying to discover when and how they were edited. He was enlisted to become his high school hockey goalie when his quick reflexes were discovered. He'd never had any interest in sports at all, but became quite a hockey star. However, when sadistic fans capture him and brutally torture him, his life becomes more-or-less a non-life.

Now, years later, he makes a weird friendship with an old, sick drunk, who enlists him to find his long-lost love, a movie actress named Mercy Carnahan who had disappeared without a trace perhaps fifty years before. Is it possible to try to unweave the mysterious story after so much time? Dexter becomes determined to figure it out. And as he discovers clues, he flashbacks and mulls over his own devastating trauma.

This story had twists, turns, and plot devices that I would have never considered. However, when I finished the book I wanted to throw it across the room. It was and incredibly unsatisfying ending, left me flat, flat, flat.

I am writing this review 6 weeks after I finished the book, so it's spotty. I just remember that it's an unusual story with an unsatisfying ending and really odd happenings. Whew.