Split
Image is best read cold, and this review is loaded with
spoilers. Read ahead at your own peril and rest assured it is fantastic.
The idea is Andrew Neville’s; a failed playwright, three
early critical successes and nothing since, making his living as an editor of a
corporate newsletter. On a whim he travels to the woods of northern Wisconsin
to the primitive hunting cabin of a friend. It is autumn, and deer are in
season. He takes an old bow and its matching arrows from the cabin. He doesn’t
expect a kill, but when a buck cuts his trail a lusty greed overtakes him. The
deer is wounded, and while tracking it Andrew comes to a man cleaning a buck.
Andrew believes the deer is his, but the man calmly
and reasonably claims it. The two have a cold exchange of words; at the end Andrew
kills the other. He doesn’t remember the actual killing, but Andrew knows he
did. He cleans up the cabin, disposes of the clothing and other evidence and returns
to Chicago. A few days later he learns the man’s identity, and realizes, for
the first time, he once knew the man. They were in the same theater company,
and while Andrew failed as a writer his victim found significant success in
Hollywood.
Andrew, after meeting his victim’s widow at the
funeral, calculatingly insinuates himself into the dead man’s life. He moves
into the boat house on his wooded estate, wears his clothes, befriends his only
child, and smoothly woos his wife. The only hold up is a despicable man named
Roland Scheiss—
“‘Scheiss means ‘shit’ in German, doesn’t it?’”
—hired by the murdered man’s parents to prove his
widow, and by extension, Andrew Neville killed him. Scheiss is loathsome. He is
filthy, crude, and corrupt. His game is blackmail, and he begins calling Andrew
at odd moments of the night threatening, cajoling, taunting. Andrew remains
calm, but his sanity begins to unravel; he converses with his victim in the
dark hours, and small meaningless events begin to weigh heavily, and finally
his narrative turns suspect; is the tale truly as it is being told, or is the
reader being deceived?
Split
Image is a fine novel. It is dark, riveting, and curious. It
is as much literature as commercial. It weaves an enticing mixture of Edgar
Allan Poe—think “The Tell-Tale Heart”—Alfred Hitchcock, and a 1950’s Gold Medal
novel. Andrew Neville is a cold, almost empty narrator, who is as interesting,
and enigmatic as any character in popular literature. The prose is sparse, poetic
and meaningful. It is also satisfying, thought-provoking, and damn good.
Split
Image is Ron Faust’s tenth published novel. It was published
in 1997 by Forge as a hardcover. It is currently available as a trade paperback
and ebook from Turner Publishing.
5 comments:
Wow, that sounds like an excellent novel. I will have to find a copy and add it to my "must read" stack of books.
You should. The original hardcover is still fairly easy to find (online at least), and it is also available as a trade paperback and ebook. I tend to prefer the print versus e-versions, but I am a little old fashioned.
Just got myself a copy on Amazon
Michael. I hope you like it.
Thanks for the review, Ben. Ron Faust's novels are on my wish-list.
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