{"id":6113,"date":"2016-10-17T07:20:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T11:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6113"},"modified":"2017-03-27T10:25:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:25:19","slug":"shadows-the-sizes-of-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6113","title":{"rendered":"****Shadows the Sizes of Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"morocco\"

photo: Carlos ZGZ, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Gregory W. Beaubien \u2013 <\/strong>In this tension-filled debut thriller, you get rather quickly to the point where you don\u2019t trust anyone\u2014and that includes first-person narrator Will Clark, who claims to be a travel writer from Chicago. Yet it always seems possible he might be something more. You never really learn how Will acquired his fighting skills or whether there is more to his agenda than appears on the surface. Beaubien takes advantage of using a first-person narrative to let Will tell you exactly what and how much he wants you to know.<\/p>\n

The book starts in Madrid, where Will is waiting to hook up with three friends for a trip to Morocco and a writing assignment. He needs money, and he\u2019s preoccupied with \u201cthe Dutchman\u2019s offer,\u201d a mysterious phrase invoked a couple of times too many, though when the explanation finally comes, it turns the story on its head.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t trust Will, you certainly don\u2019t trust his friends. There\u2019s Tammy, the spoiled rich girl accustomed to having the whole world bend to her wishes, and her loser (Will\u2019s opinion) Irish boyfriend Nigel. Nor do you trust Will\u2019s women\u2014the unpleasant Marissa, especially, and Stacy, who\u2019s just arrive on the scene. Stacy keeps turning up, her cool blonde beauty a salve to Will\u2019s overheated spirit, but who is she, really?<\/p>\n

Tammy and Nigel and Will and Marissa meet up in Madrid before heading across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tangier. The couple recklessly embroils Will and Marissa in a small-town drug deal that goes frightfully bad. People are dead, and the escape south to Marrakesh is risky. I really don\u2019t want to say more about the fast-moving plot, to let you discover its surprises for yourself.<\/p>\n

Much of the excitement in reading the book is that the story\u2014and Will\u2014are never predictable. You can\u2019t be sure where you\u2019ll end up\u2014geographically, morally, or metaphorically. If there\u2019s a fault in the writing, it is that Beaubien (via Will) tends to name the emotions he\u2019s feeling, rather than trusting the readers to discern them through his Will\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Beaubien is a journalist and has a reporter\u2019s eye for descriptive detail that takes you right to where you feel the gritty desert, the heat, and the hostile stares of the men in tea shops. If you\u2019ve been to Morocco, you will experience it all again, down to the hair-raising trek over the Atlas mountains. If you haven\u2019t, you’ll believe you have. This dense atmosphere is one of the book\u2019s most compelling aspects.
\n