Obedience by Will Lavender

Obedience by Will Lavender is another suspense book that fails to live up to its hype. Winchester University's class Logic and Reasoning 204 has an enigmatic teacher, Professor Williams, who on the first day of class announces that a girl named Polly will die in six weeks if the students fail to solve the mystery of her disappearance. Most of the students treat it as a joke, but for three students: Mary, Dennis, and Brian, it quickly becomes an obsession. Individually, at first, they start investigating the professor and the hypothetical case. Events throw them together when the professor himself disappears. The story is an interesting exercise in how people react to a perceived threat to another human being, but it quickly dissolves into impossible coincidences, and then the author blatantly lies to the reader. There has been a recent spate of books (Little Face and The Art Thief) that get a great deal of good press and reviews for debut authors. But each of these books has a twist at the end that betrays the reader. Some authors can pull off that kind of writing with a flair that leaves the reader breathless and full of admiration. These books instead make me want to pull out my hair and take out an ad in the newspaper announcing what a waste of time it was. Reading a book is a give and take between author and reader. Good authors understand that and respect it. This author instead betrays that trust with a implausible ending that satisfies no one.