The Grove by John Rector ***

A brief prologue: I missed last week, so posted this as well as The Hiding Place which shows up below in the date that I wrote it (mid-February). For those of you keeping track, I'm still on course. And now, The Grove:

If you like CSI, The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, or any of those other crime investigation shows, you'll probably like this book. This was a recommendation from my husband - a great one - I thought it was a fast, entertaining, mind-bending read and just what I was looking for. I'll give you the same preface he gave me: A man named Dexter wakes up one morning to discover a body in a grove of trees on his property. You find out pretty early in the book that he has some mental "demons" he's battling, and he struggles for the duration to try to figure out if he had anything to do with how the body got there.

This would be a fantastic movie - sudden clips as he cuts in and out of consciousness, little details that don't seem to be significant until they suddenly are ... so are. I really like that Rector doesn't allow you to watch Dexter's insanity on the sidelines - you're there with him. You only know what he knows, and you only see what he sees - and that's quite a perspective to have sometimes. I really enjoyed it (even if the bit about the fire ants was a little much for me ... I'm allergic to them), and found it a pleasant diversion from real life. And, after all, isn't that what a good book is for?? The only reason it doesn't get more stars is the same reason those shows do - I'm totally enthralled for the 45 minutes I'm watching, and then I immediately think about something else ... the only things that stick with me are the way my skin crawls when I think about certain scenes from the book. Nothing didactic or deep here, just a great diversion. But, again, nothing wrong with that!