Chamber Four

There’s a compelling case here, but since Hall himself criticizes the world he creates, it’s tough to identify with it or sympathize or enjoy it in his stead. And so it feels like there’s not much to like about this book except the secret of that one magic trick in the Laughing Club. Which simply isn’t enough.

This wi-fi-only Kindle is a contender. It’s only $139, making it the cheapest E-Ink ereader on the market.

Magazines are evidently desperate to convince… the Internet (?) … that they’re not on the verge of collapse. Huh?

Based only on the cover, four of our contributors made up a one-paragraph premise for this week’s contestant, Shadow Play, by Rajorshi Chakraborti. Can you reverse-engineer their fabrications and pick out the book’s real plot?

Great mysteries are driven by passion. That passion has to come from the protagonist, but it has to go toward the mystery being solved. Here’s what happens when that recipe breaks down.

“Misadventure” is a book that isn’t shy about having an intricate, twisting plot, but it still gets its drive from vivid characters, and the way it dives headfirst into conflicts, one after another.

Based only on the cover at right, four of our contributors made up a one-paragraph premise for this week’s contestant, This Must Be the Place, by Kate Racculia. Can you reverse-engineer their fabrications and pick out the real premise?

Past C4 contributor Michael Hastings was on The Colbert Report!

Race is more complicated than this, and it deserves more than a revisionist historical novel in which a noble, perfect white man saves and embraces a handful of black people for no real reason.

On every other level, this is a very good novel, and Taylor is certainly a writer to watch. Hopefully, his next book will stare a little more fearlessly into the abyss.

And so, it’s only page 12 and we already know the lay of the land: this will be a mystery founded on thin logic, absurd coincidences, overstuffed gestures, forced authorial machinations, and plain old unimaginative writing. It only gets worse from here.