At the beginning of the fall term at Winchester University, in rural Indiana, Professor Williams presents a startling scenario to the students in his Logic and Reasoning 204 course: A young girl has gone missing and the class has until the end of the quarter to find her or she will be murdered. The students believe Williams' tale is nothing more than a logic puzzle, but soon three of them stumble upon a real-life, unsolved disappearance that sounds eerily similar to the one Williams described. Each of them becomes obsessed with the two women and the professor, a shadowy figure himself. As the real world and Williams' puzzle begin to merge, the three young people are thrown into a complex and horrifying game of deception. What's real, what's fiction, and how far will the students go to obey authority?
Industry Reviews
""Obedience" is evidence that crime fiction is hardly a played-out genre .... [G]rafts the world-turned-upside-down suspense of a Harlan Coben thriller to the hall-of-mirrors vertigo of a novel by Paul Auster .... [I]ts ultimate implications continue to spin out in a reader's mind after the final page is turned." --"Wall Street Journal" "Authentic puzzle mysteries are an endangered species in these hectic times, so it's a genuine, if slightly perverse, kick to follow every byzantine clue in this bizarre game.... If you solve this one without peeking at the last chapter, it's an automatic A." --"New York Times" Book Review ""Obedience" is a fiendishly clever thriller, debut or no, and Lavender exhibits deft control at the wheel." --Bookgasm.com ""Obedience" is quite a twisty little number .... the taunting nature of the challenge is irresistible...." --"New York Daily News" "[T]his is one of those high-concept thrillers with a final twist that upends all expectations, filled with characters who are not what they seem." --Entertainment Weekly ""Obedience "is a full course load of sinister fun."--Salon.com An inspired thriller about cognitive dissonance, conjectural misdirection and the conspicuous dichotomy between academia and the real world." --Kirkus Reviews "Will Lavender stuns with this compelling thriller.... The surreal but believable landscape fairly bursts from its confines, goading the reader into finishing just one more page." --"Louisville Courier-Journal ""It's a terrific book, part cat-and-mouse mystery and part psychological study of group behavior.... [A] wonderful book with a strong emotional punch at theend." --"St. Petersburg Times ""Lavender's first novel suggests he has a bright future. The novel is briskly plotted with deft narrative. "Obedience" builds to a swirling conclusion. It becomes a place where morality is blurred and intentions drift astray." --"Tampa Tribune""In his tautly strung debut novel, "Obedience," literature professor Will Lavender tears a page of out Milgram's notebooks and sets into motion a chain of events that escalates far beyond its intended intellectual exercise. . . . Mystery fans will be satisfied to hang on around the story's hairpin turns as the list of suspects swells and narrows with the unearthing of each clue, but Lavender . . . is aiming at a broader target and posing deeper questions." --"Bookpage" "First-time novelist Lavender has a knack for creepy characters and red herrings." --"Library Journal" "First novelist Lavender has sprinkled his text with enough red herrings to feed the Biblical 5,000 but uses them to build page-turning suspense. . . . Lavender's invocation of the notorious Milgram experiment conducted at Yale on obedience to authority adds an additional-and salutary-layer of psychological meaning to his elaborate plot." --"Booklist" More Praise for Obedience: ""Obedience" draws you in and never lets go -- and what a ride!"--David Baldacci "In his dream-like and labyrinthine debut, Will Lavender delivers a clever, intricate page-turner that kept me guessing late into the night. "Obedience "is a house of mirrors where every corner we turn is a false reflection of the truth until the shocking final scene. A gripping exploration of human nature and all its foibles told inLavender's fresh and original voice, "Obedience" is not to be missed."--Lisa Unger "Obedience is a very scary story set on the border where good meets evil, located in this case in that scariest of places, academia. Taut, twisty, and highly original: the pages turned themselves."--Peter Abrahams "A taut and timely thriller that explores the dark side of academia, where classrooms are dangerous and paranoia abounds."--Karin Slaughter "A taut, clever puzzle, so artfully crafted and tightly wound that it springs open its trap when you least expect it to."--Carol Goodman, author of" The Sonnet Lover "and "The Ghost Orchid"" ""A devilishly inventive debut that reads like a house of mirrors. Nothing is what it seems, right up to the devastating finale."""--Brian Freeman, author of "Stripped " "From the Hardcover edition."
