Under radar
Tolkin, Michael
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Michael Tolkin has garnered acclaim for his classic dark comedies The Player and Among the Dead. His most ambitious novel yet, Under Radar is a tale of guilt and redemption that is "provocative...so unexpected, so full of startling insights, that it sems to be blazing a fresh trail" (John Hartl, The Oregonian). While vacationing in Jamaica, Tom Levy witnesses a man goading his four-year-old daughter into an act so vulgar that Tom vows he must pay for it with his life. The next day, when they come to grips atop the Dunn's River Falls, Tom kills the man in cold blood. Condemned to prison, Tom faces a world unlike any be has ever known, among the most brutal and hardened men of Jamaica. Does an elusive story hold the key their salvation, and Tom's own? And once Tom has told it, can he find a way to reenter the hearts of those he has left behind? As gripping as it is wrought with layers of meaning, Under Radar "places parables within parables, exploring the essence of evil and the possibility of redemption....Tolkin has shown himself no stranger to the psyche's stranger recesses, though the results here are more unsettling than ever" (Don McLeese, Msnbc.com).
Atlantic Monthly Press
2002
212 pages