Into the Heart of Darkness

THREE GRAVES FULL
Jamie Mason
Gallery Books
February 12, 2013

2013 is starting out to be a very good book year. I have enjoyed the books I have blogged about tremendously, in very different ways. Three Graves Full is the one I couldn't put down though and read in just a couple of sittings. As a longtime Coen Brothers fan the publisher's description comparing the book to the work of the Coens was a lure I couldn't resist. Jamie Mason had me at the first sentence: "There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.” If you are a fan of the dark humor of Fargo then Three Graves Full is just the book for you.

Jason Getty is a cipher really, a pale and doughy youngish man with no friends and no wife. The wife he had for seven years told him she was leaving him, did not love him any more and possibly never did. Three days later she died in an anesthesiology accident, leaving him a sum of money, not much but enough to buy a house and quit his job for a time. Jason describes himself as having suffered a courage-ectomy somewhere between childhood trauma and schoolyard bullying. A chance encounter with a stranger on a motorcycle and a careless act of kindness plunges Jason into a nightmare he can't escape. The stranger, Gary Harris, pretends to be making friends with Jason but he is really a con man and swindler who involves the unwitting Jason in his crimes and taunts and intimidates him for months. One day Gary taunts Jason beyond endurance and in a fit of "howling primal rage", Jason kills him and buries him in the back of his property.

For a year and a bit Jason suffers the tortures of the damned, guilt and the overpowering fear of discovery. He begins to snap out of it when no one comes inquiring about Gary. He becomes aware that his property is in bad shape and decides to have some landscaping work around the house- not anywhere near the grave at the back of the property. Shouldn't be a problem right? Not unless the landscapers find two graves just under his bedroom window, graves that Jason did not dig. The cops know he had nothing to do with the two graves but want to bring in cadaver dogs to check out the rest of the property. When Jason makes the decision to dig up Gary in the few hours grace that he has it sets off a series of events that would be farcical if they weren't so horrifying. Many people are drawn into the action, from the connections of the people in the two extra graves, to the cops and one cop's dog, Tessa.

Most of the book is told through internal dialogue but it is amazingly cinematic. I had such clear images in my head while reading- sometimes grisly and horrible ones. Three Graves Full is not for the faint of heart, believe me. But if you enjoy a convoluted and gripping tale of human good and evil, you should run out and get it. The characters jump off the page and the language is often lovely and lyrical; many passages I just stopped to savor and appreciate.

Thanks to netgalley and Gallery Books for an advance reading copy.

RATING- 5 shovels