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Down River | 
| Author: John Hart
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.00
You Save: $10.95 (44%)
New (24) Used (16) Collectible (2) from $12.28
Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 187
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0312359314
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312359317
ASIN: 0312359314
Publication Date: October 2, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Everything that shaped him happened near that river….Now its banks are filled with lies and greed, shame, and murder…. John Hart’s debut, The King of Lies, was compelling and lyrical, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, “There hasn’t been a thriller as showily literate since Scott Turow came along.” Now, in Down River, Hart makes a scorching return to Rowan County, where he drives his characters to the edge, explores the dark side of human nature, and questions the fundamental power of forgiveness. Adam Chase has a violent streak, and not without reason. As a boy, he saw things that no child should see, suffered wounds that cut to the core and scarred thin. The trauma left him passionate and misunderstood---a fighter. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam is hounded out of the only home he’s ever known, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years he disappears, fades into the faceless gray of New York City. Now he’s back and nobody knows why, not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind. But Adam has his reasons. Within hours of his return, he is beaten and accosted, confronted by his family and the women he still holds dear. No one knows what to make of Adam’s return, but when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him and Adam again finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life, not just to prove his own innocence, but to reclaim the only life he’s ever wanted. Bestselling author John Hart holds nothing back as he strips his characters bare. Secrets explode, emotions tear, and more than one person crosses the brink into deadly behavior as he examines the lengths to which people will go for money, family, and revenge. A powerful, heart-pounding thriller, Down River will haunt your thoughts long after the last page is turned. Praise for John Hart and The King of Lies “Treat yourself to something new and truly out of the ordinary.” --- Rocky Mountain News “A top-notch debut. Hart’s prose is like Raymond Chandler’s, angular and hard.” -- Entertainment Weekly (grade A) “A gripping performance.” --- People magazine “A marriage of carefully crafted prose alongside have-to-keep-reading suspense.” --- The Denver Post “A masterful piece of writing.” --- The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) “A gripping mystery/thriller and a fully fleshed, thoughtful work of literature.” --- Winston-Salem Journal “ The King of Lies moves and reads like a book on fire.” ---Pat Conroy “John Hart’s debut . . . is that most engrossing of rarities, a well-plotted mystery novel that is written in a beautifully poetic style.” ---Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama “Grisham-style intrigue and Turow-style brooding.”
---The New York Times
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
 Adam is banished from Eden, but the serpent lives on May 12, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Adam Chase was barely acquitted of a young man's murder five years ago despite his stepmother's testimony against him. His father chose to abide by his wife and asked Adam to leave the family farm. Adam leaves Rowan County, North Carolina with his memories of an idyllic childhood by the river, and spends the next five years nursing his wounds in New York City. Now he's back, his best friend, Danny Faith, wanting to speak to him in person about some life-altering decision. But Danny's disappeared and soon Adam is once again the town's suspect in a beating, an arson, and murders that follow. To clear his name once and for all, Adam tracks down the real killer and in the process, resurrects the pain that has crippled his family.
Reading `Down River' by John Hart is like stumbling into a Tennessee Williams play, but with the heat turned up--way up. It's about greed, secrets, murder, backstabbing, front stabbing, and what Williams called "mendacity." Awash in hyperbole, it's a hothouse of emotions, where everyone speaks and acts as if someone ought to be named Brick and the daddy here, Jacob Chase, ought to be Big Daddy. There are no stiff upper lips to be found--everyone emotes and anger doesn't just percolate, it boils over. This isn't the Antebellum South; laden with atmosphere and family dysfunction, it practically shrieks Southern gothic. Mr. Hart's penchant for melodrama suits his theme quite well and even if it gets unwieldy at times, it's a decent mystery that entertains.
 A true page turner. May 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
According to most of the people in Rowan County, North Carolina, acquittal was a term used by the courts when they didn't have enough evidence to convict a man. It had nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Adam Chase was guilty of murder. His step-mother had even testified against him. The acquittal meant nothing.
Adam Chase was tried for a murder he did not commit. After going through an ordeal like that, Adam knew he could deal with the suspicion, animosity, and outright hostility, but his father's betrayal cut to the quick. He couldn't handle that. Jacob Chase chose to believe his wife's version of the story rather than his son's. Left with few alternatives, Adam turned his back on his family, friends, and Rowan County. In New York City he would be an anonymous face in the crowd. The past and the future would no longer matter.
Adam was wrong. Five years had passed and the walls he built around his heart were thick and solid, but one phone call from a childhood friend asking him to come home, and the walls started crumbling. Adam was no longer insulated from the pain. There would be no peace until he returned home and set things right.
There was trouble brewing in Rowan County and Adam's unexpected return added fuel to the fire. The friend that summoned him home had disappeared, and when a family member was assaulted, the cops looked at Adam with suspicion. Was the trouble dogging his family stemming from the past, or was it related to the latest controversy involving the proposed nuclear power plant? The nuclear power plant would give the town and the county a much needed economic boost, but his father's refusal to sell the land needed for it had stalled the project.
Unable to bridge the gap between himself and his father, Adam considered heading back to New York, but then the first body surfaced. It was found in an isolated cavern on Chase land. Adam knew he couldn't turn his back on his friends and family again. He had to ferret out the truth. He owed them that.
Down River is an incredible story about relationships, revenge, and retribution. Written from Adam's point of view, it was easy to understand his attitude and why he did what he did. But John Hart took it one step farther. His secondary characters are not treated as secondary characters, but as an integral part of the story. I felt their pain and understood their motives as surely as I did Adam's.
If you haven't read Down River yet, I highly recommend it. It is the second novel written by John Hart and I am looking forward to the next one.
 A good read. April 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My thought, after reading the first two chapters of this book, was something like, 'Wow! This writer really has a distinctive voice.' By the end of the book that voice was less distinct, or at least I had some trouble differentiating between Hart's and Grisham's voices. Nevertheless, this author has taken some cliched southern characters and situations and breathed literate life into them. I enjoyed the story, but more than that I enjoyed the relationships drawn between the male characters, living and dead. The protagonist, Adam Chase, is someone who, although I could not identify with him, I totally believed in his reality. And also that of his father, adopted brother, the cops, the family friend and the family enemy. Where my belief broke down was when it came to the female characters: They were too cliched, too one-dimensional, with one exception and that was Sarah Yates. She was a fresh character, and one I believed in. That inability to write a 3D, living, breathing woman is one shared by a number of bestselling authors, including Grisham, and although I have enjoyed early works by such authors I usually become fatigued and drop them from my 'must read' list. Hart may last longer if he can remedy this one fault, because I truly loved the internal dialogue of his protagonist and those finely drawn relationships/conflicts with the other men -- I thought that the writing there was brilliant. I liked this book, and I'm hoping for even better ones.
Don't miss this one! April 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I listened to the unabridged audio version of this book--it was excellent! I have not read John Hart's first book, but it's next on my list. While the NYT review compares Hart's style to Scott Turow, et.al., he reminds me more of one of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke. If you're a Burke fan, I highly recommend Down River. BTW, the narrator of Down River also sounds very similar to the reader of James Lee Burke's audio books, Will Patton, who has an amazing voice for storytelling.
For those who have ever been wronged...a great book April 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A boy is falsely accused of a murder he didn't commit, is acquitted of the same and yet, is still considered the murderer-in-fact years later. Can he ever clear his name especially with an assault and another murder happening just as he reappears in his hometown?
After the trial he was almost all but disowned by his father. His dad is still torn between son and wife even years later. Can our young man ever be part of his family again when his main accuser was his stepmother?
This book blends together social injustice, mystery, love, longing and family turmoil in a way that should evoke a range of emotions in anyone with half a heart.
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