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Richard Doetsch' latest novel, The 13th Hour, is the book I wish I had written. It is billed as a thriller, but it is so much more. It has elements of the whodunit, the murder mystery, the love story, the heist, the disaster movie, science fiction, and a journey of the spirit. Think maybe Maltese Falcon with Butterfly Effect. Or Asphalt Jungle with Quantum Leap.
It has the aging billionaire, the exotic gangster, the crooked cops, time travel. And best of all is a mysterious McGuffin, ensconced in a wooden lockbox, to provide "the stuff that dreams are made of" and for which a loser of a brother is willing to risk his entire misbegotten life. Not to worry, you are not opening the cover to a hopeless mish-mash of styles. The story is masterfully told in chapter after page-turning chapter.
The protagonist is Nick Quinn, exact job title unknown – all we know is he travels frequently and comes home to write up acquisitions analysis. His wife is the equally perfect Julia, a lawyer, whom he first met at a high school swim meet where they were both competing. They live a bit more modestly than their neighbors in an effort to get their house paid off before starting a family.
Perhaps it is a gimmick but the chapters are numbered in reverse order, all the better to chart Nick's travels back in time. Each of twelve hours is peeled back, one at a time, like peeling the layers of an onion. We follow along with Nick as he tries to prevent his wife's death at the hand of an unknown assailant. She was his reason for living, after all, and if he does nothing, then he will be framed for her death.
As he unravels the mystery, he comes to realize that her death is someone intertwined with the death of 212 others who died the same morning in a plane crash. What could possibly be the connection? And no, it is not just because a butterfly flapped its wings on another continent. It is not even because Julia was originally supposed to be on that flight.
The agent of the reversal of time is a very nice antique gold pocket watch. He must keep it about him as each hour winds down so he can jump back to the previous hour. This is a heck of a watch, surviving not only untold centuries but immersion in water. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking, just like our Nick.
How far would you go to save someone you love? Would you trade the life of your best friend for your wife? How about those 212 who die in the plane crash? Should we just kiss them off because we don't know their names anyway?
The characters are well developed, not only Nick and Julia, but the bad cops and the good brother/bad brother who all play key roles in the turns of plot. They have rich backstories, a personal histories. These are no comic book cutouts. Doetsch has us feeling sympathy for all of them. We feel like such suckers later when we find out some of them are villains.
My only quibble is that maybe we should not have been told what was in the wooden lockbox. Some McGuffins are better off not explained, as any Hitchcock fan would tell you! Let audiences debate the matter for years to come.
If you have been wishing for another page-turner as good as Da Vinci Code, you can just put yourself on the pre-order list for this book. (This reviewer managed to obtain an advance copy of the book.) It is almost unbearable how one is repeatedly put on the edge of one's seat as each hour (and chapter) winds down and Nick has to avoid arrest, drowning, bullets or other disasters so he can continue his quest to save Julia. It is not the equal of Dan Brown's novel; it is far better! It is a thriller with heart.
Publication is formally scheduled for December 2009 by Atria Books, a division of Simon and Schuster. Also keep an eye peeled for the film, since it is coming to a silver screen near you. The movie rights have been snapped up by New Line Cinema, with Michael De Luca to produce. Fox is developing a prior book by Doetsch, The Thieves of Heaven into a film, too.
THE 13TH HOUR, by Richard Doetsch, Atria Books, December 2009, ISBN: 9781439147917, 352 pages, $25.95. Five stars.
