Interesting writing method, but I couldn't connect with the story or the characters. It certainly stays true to the unreliable narrator, which often doesn't bother me. I wish I could say that I enjoyed it more than I did. It was a decent read.

This book supplied by the Publisher and NetGalley for an honest review.

I really thought this book would be up my alley, but heavy sigh it was not my cup of tea. I ended up skimming about halfway through because I hate to leave a mystery unturned but I can't say I can recommend it to anyone.

So we have a detective, DeMarco and a writer, Huston. They become friends and share their personal tragedies. DeMarco and his wife lost a child and are now separated. Huston lost both of his parents. His mother to a robbery and his father to suicide shortly after.

So when Huston's whole family, 3 kids (including an infant) and his wife are found with their throats slit and Huston is nowhere to be found, he becomes the prime suspect. But, knowing Huston like he does, DeMarco can't believe he would ever do this. Huston seems to have it all, a wonderful family, a successful career. He couldn't have just snapped could he? But who else would have committed this heinous crime?

Two Days Gone tells the story from DeMarco and Huston's alternating POV. Huston's POV is half real life and half him pretending to be a character in a book to help him keep going and get by. I think this is what I didn't like. I get the idea and I actually like the sound of it but it didn't deliver for me.

The mystery was good, it was just the way the book was set up that didn't keep my attention.

Two Days Gone is one of those books that looks like it would be perfect for me on paper. It starts with a brutal murder – always a good sign – and then goes straight onto the manhunt for the supposed perpetrator, the husband and father of the murder victims. I say supposed because it isn’t clear he (Thomas Huston) is the killer and those who know him well say it isn’t in his character to have behaved in such a way.

Tracking him down is a detective that both knows and admires him, considers him as close to a friend as he has. And that is saying something because DeMarco doesn’t have any friends, or family for that matter. He is a man who lives alone and works alone and seems to do everything in his power to make people dislike him. In Thomas though he had seen a kindred spirit, someone who maybe wasn’t as happy on the outside as he appeared.

This feeling seems to make it easy for DeMarco to decide Huston has killed his family, at least until the evidence stops adding up and he starts finding people lying to him everywhere he turns. Determined to find the truth, he digs deeper into Huston’s life than he might otherwise, discovering secrets about his friend and author and also truths about himself. It isn’t always pretty and I found both DeMarco and Huston hard to like as a result.

This dislike meant that I couldn’t root for either of them. I do struggle when I can’t connect to characters and this was definitely the case here. Their fates, which as a reader I should have been invested in, didn’t really mean much to me and, as a result, I found I didn’t much care for the outcome of the story. This is a shame and it wasn’t the case all the way through. Initially, I was drawn in. Both men have tragedy in their pasts and this made them vulnerable, characters I should feel for.

However, as the book went on I became frustrated with their behaviour. I understood Thomas’ confusion at the beginning but not his actions at the end. Silvas does his best to explain it but for me it didn’t fit with the picture of Thomas he had drawn. I also didn’t understand DeMarco. I got why he was angry, why he was a loner, but I didn’t understand why he didn’t act at certain points in the investigation, other than to keep the plot moving forward.

For me, it was the final third that left me disengaged. Up until then, the story had alternated between DeMarco and Huston, with chapters focusing on Huston’s state of mind as he tried to make sense of what had happened. It meant the plot slowly unfolded and there were twists and turns to keep me interested and turning pages. Then Huston disappeared apart from as part of DeMarco’s story and the detective’s story was the only one I was reading.

I kept expecting to hear from Huston again and when I didn’t I felt disappointed. The same was true of the ending which, for me, didn’t ring true. Like I said earlier, this was a shame but for me this was a book that started well, showed promise but didn’t deliver. I liked it but only a little – sorry!

A cop must delve into his own troubled past when he lands one of the hardest cases of his career: to find a local professor accused of murdering his entire family. The case becomes complicated because the officer and the professor had begun a friendship well before the murders. Now the entire town believes the professor has committed a horrible crime, and the officer will need to fight his own suspicions if he wants to prove his friend’s innocence. Author Randall Silvis tackles the thriller genre with strong literary overtones in the mostly successful novel Two Days Gone.

Sergeant Ryan DeMarco spends his days fighting crime and his nights fighting his inner demons. An accident years earlier left him with a broken family, and even though it’s been more than a decade he still struggles to make it through each block of 24 hours. Still, he knows his job requires him to remain alert and vigilant, especially when he receives word of a terrible crime.

Thomas Huston, bestselling author and an English professor at the local university, has gone missing at the worst possible time: his wife and three young children were discovered brutally murdered in their beds, and no one has seen Thomas since. DeMarco asks for permission to lead the case, citing the challenge, but even DeMarco’s supervising officer knows it’s the sergeant’s budding friendship with Thomas that drove him to ask for the lead.

DeMarco first met Thomas when the author contacted him about questions for a new book. The two shared a rapport and DeMarco begins to appreciate the presence of a new friend. Life was so much lonelier without one.

When the call comes, then, that Thomas has fled the area after the murders, DeMarco decides to trust his gut that Thomas didn’t kill his family. His faith in Thomas wavers at times but never breaks, and it allows him to start seeing patterns and finding leads no one else can. What he discovers is that a writer’s passion can often conflict with real life in the worst of ways, and Thomas may have allowed his drive to create his next bestseller override common sense.

Author Randall Silvis goes deep into the thriller genre with a decidedly literary slant and succeeds for the most part. Readers get the opportunity to explore the natural landscape of the small Pennsylvania town through Silvis’s description. Many thrillers skim over the weather and the topography of a book’s setting. Silvis offers his readers the chance to see the book’s setting, contributing to the tone, mood, and pace of the book.

The literary approach works in many places but only to a degree. Readers experience the story both from DeMarco’s point of view as well as Thomas’s perspective. Because Thomas is on the run at some point his observations begin to drag, especially due to the unanswered question of whether he did in fact kill his family. Not providing all of the answers right away leaves Thomas’s thoughts circling around the same feelings and ideas. After hearing about his pain and grief for the fourth or fifth time, readers may find themselves getting restless.

Fortunately Silvis takes the story away from Thomas about halfway through and lets DeMarco lead both the case and the book. While readers may feel a dearth of information after having spent so much time with Thomas throughout the beginning portions, it’s also almost a relief not to have to listen to his considerations that can border on the maniacal.

Less satisfying is the entire premise of the book. Thomas helps a minor character with a deeply personal decision, putting in motion most of the events in the story. The explanation for how he got in touch with that character and decided to help her doesn’t quite ring true to real life. That lack of realism also comes across during an attack on DeMarco. When the police sergeant asks repeatedly why another character would want to come after him, readers will most likely wonder the same thing and feel themselves pulled out of the story.

The book definitely hits all the checkmarks for a murder mystery, however. It’s mostly an enjoyable read. For those who want a thriller with a more literary approach, I recommend readers Borrow Two Days Gone.

The book begins with the discovery that Claire Hutson and her children have all been brutally murdered and her husband is missing. The book then takes turns to tell the investigation side through the eyes of Sergeant Ryan DeMarco and Thomas Hutson as he goes on the run.

There is a connection between the two narrators as Hutson is a well know crime novelist and DeMarco has not only read his books but been a part of research Hutson did for one of his books.

It seems pretty clear cut, that although there seems to be no reason to it, Hutson has murdered his family - otherwise why would he be on the run?

I really liked the two main characters in this book. DeMarco is almost channelling Columbo in his detective style, and I enjoyed it. He uses the writing of Hutson to try and second guess his motives and actions whilst on the run. He also has a little back story of his own running through the book and a complex relationship with his estranged wife.

Meanwhile Hutson gives a glimpse to what he is going through whilst on the run. At one point he becomes one of his characters in order to be able to carry on and get through his ordeal. I found this a really interesting perspective.

Both men are heading twoards Annabel, the muse of Hutson's unpublished latest book. One man knows who she is and the other is trying to find out. This was the part of the book that hooked me in as the plot unravels to reveal whom Annabel is or whom Hutson wants her to be.

Just when I thought this book was done and dusted there were a couple of twists, and not ones I was expecting. At times I found this book terribly sad - so much loss between the pages. However, it also manged to be a really good mystery.

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars.

I was initially really drawn by the blurb of this book. However, when I was 25% through, I felt disappointed that the story wasn't really going anywhere. I then struggled to understand the need for Houston, on the run for supposedly murdering his family, to begin having graphic sexual images about his wife. Ultimately, I could not keep going with this book. I hate to ever say that about a book. I fully appreciate the author put a huge amount of time and effort into writing this story, and I'm sure plenty of people will love it, but it just wasn't for me. Sorry.

Well liked college professor and famous author Thomas Houston had turned to State Trooper Ryan DeMarco for police procedure for one of his novels The two men had become friends over the course of many meetings on this research. Then Thomas’s in laws go to his house and find their daughter and their three grandchildren one only a baby brutally murdered with Thomas no place to be found. Then it comes to light the last time Thomas was seen was walking down the road with a knife in his hand. So Thomas becomes the main suspect in these horrible murders. Ryan is given the investigation and starts the hunt to find Thomas. But Ryan finds it hard to believe Thomas did this. Ryan believed that Thomas cherished his family and had everything a man could ask for. It shows that Thomas did have his own demons: his mother was murdered while being in a hold up in their own store. Then Thomas's father committed suicide shortly thereafter as he couldn’t live without Thomas’s mother. The memories never really leave Thomas. Ryan understood how one night could tear your life apart when he , his wife, and their son had been in a terrible car accident ten years ago. Ryan and his wife survived but not their child. Ryan’s wife blamed Ryan and left him and was never the same nor was Ryan. One of Thomas’s students - Nathan- gave insight to what Thomas’s new novel was about. It was also proven Thomas didn’t murder his family as he was at work on his new novel. Ryan does look into other suspects while looking for Thomas. While on the run from the police Thomas alternated from the horror of what happened to his family to a shocked distance as he tries to track his course as if he were part of his novel. But Thomas is also desperately looking for food and shelter and someone he can trust. Ryan does find Thomas’s notes on his new novel and Ryan thinks he might know where Thomas is headed.
I did enjoy this story a lot even though it was pretty dark. The writing was good. The characters seemed real and you felt like you were there with them. This had a very good plot. Although I will say the story dragged at times but for the most part that wasn’t the case. I didn’t like where Thomas was thinking about the oral sex he would never get again from his wife. Just didn’t really fit him or the story as far as I am concerned. But for the most part I really enjoyed this. I kept coming up with different scenarios and killers but I was wrong so you had to keep reading if only to find out who killed Thomas’s family and why.So i really liked the ins and outs of this story and I recommend.

This was a quick read and had enough twists and turns to keep one's interest but I did find the main character to be annoying and some of the wording is a bit grandiose. I kept coming back to the story wanting to find out who had killed the Hustons and why. In addition to the suspense and the mystery, this book describes how novelists work and think. The way in which Huston build his characters in such a compassionate and generous way is fascinating.

"The perfect family. The perfect house. The perfect life. All gone now. Snap your fingers five times, that's how long it took. Five soft taps on the door. Five steel-edged scrapes across the tender flesh of night."

In the first chapter, alone, I thought, "if I could see my face right now, I probably look like a combination of 'surprised', 'jaw drop/shocked', and 'crying' emojis.

The vivid, graphic, horrific description of Thomas Huston's murdered family - especially of his infant son (!) - just sucked all of the air out of my lungs. Sad as it was, I thought, "If this is the first chapter, I can't imagine what's coming up in the rest of it!"

And then...

While I felt that the writing was powerful in certain instances:

"He had only to let one of the four horrible images float to the surface of his mind and a pain like none he had ever experienced would seize him and double him up again, twist him into a rigid knot of agony whose only release, short-lived and painful itself, would be an animal-like scream."

and that the book got off to a fairly solid start - very intriguing, intense, etc. - unfortunately, around the half-way point, my predominant reaction was, "Seriously?! How am I only 50% through this book?!"

It's not that the story wasn't interesting. The Sergeant's chapters seemed to progress at a decent pace, as he was methodically gathering information, following leads, etc., but the chapters written from Thomas Huston's perspective tended to drag on and it took a very long time for any progress to be made, it seemed. Luckily, most of the story is told from DeMarco's point of view.

Towards the end of the novel, Randall Silvis cheekily inserted a red herring moment and then had the Sergeant acknowledge it as being a red herring, which gave me a chuckle. When the person who was ultimately responsible was finally revealed, it didn't feel like a surprise, but more of an, "Oh...ok, yeah, that makes sense." However, the way in which that person was connected to another character in the story was rather crafty.

Overall, the narrative took an inordinate amount of time to unfold and would have been more powerful, with different pacing. The last 20-25% of the novel could have been condensed and still would have communicated the same plot points.

It gave me the mental image of falling off a very tall building and taking so long to hit the ground that the person falling would stop being concerned with dying and more concerned with how long it was taking to happen ("Shouldn't I be hitting the ground, already?!").

"Monday dawned like a mile-long freight train filled with radioactive sewage. DeMarco trudged through it. All he could do now was to wait for a tip, a sighting [...]. He felt as heavy and hollow as a gut-shot dog dragging its ass uphill."

You don't say...

This is a book that keeps you guessing, just when you think you have it figured out you find out more information that leads you down a different path. I can usually always figure out movies or books but this one had me guessing. This is a dark book but the ending left me satisfied.

This book is told by Ryan DeMarco the cop trying to find his friend and discover if he was the one who killed his entire family and Thomas Huston the author and professor whose wonderful life has been destroyed in one night. His wife and children brutally murdered. Huston is missing, did he kill his family or is he searching for his familys killer? DeMarco can relate to Huston's sense of despair since he lost his young son in a car accident DeMarco's life has been put on hold. He hasn't done anything to finish the projects he was working on, he is still tracking his grieving wife and is really stuck in place even years later.

Both of these broken men take us on a very dark and brilliantly written path toward answers, though the answers for each may be different they both find their own sense of peace in the end.

Wonderfully done.

A quote from the acknowledgements section:

The best fiction is a voyage of feeling, and the writer's job is to generate sentipensante for his readers, those feelings that give rise not to an intellectual kind of knowledge but an emotional knowledge, a deeper connection with what Faulkner called "the old verities and truths of the heart".

I feel this is exactly what Silvis accomplished in Two Days Gone. His writing is visceral and portrays extremely well the emotions of grief and guilt.

Thomas Huston's wife and children have been murdered. He, best-selling writer and college professor is the prime suspect.

Sergeant DeMarco, in charge of tracking Huston, has ghosts of his own. As an acquaintance of the writer, he does not quite believe that Huston is responsible for the crimes.

The investigation will yield truths of the hearts of both men and some of the reader's too. An atmospheric and haunting read.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

As this is the first book read for 2017 I wondered if it would set the standard of what is to come. I certainly hope so! Thomas Huston is a lecturer on Creative Writing as well as an author. He researches his books meticulously and in the course of his research he meets Ryan De Marco who becomes a friend. When Huston's wife and three children are found murdered De Marco .finds it impossible to believe this sensitive thoughtful man is to blame.

The story follows Huston and De Marco's path told from their points of view. The writing is beautiful and the story is totally absorbing. Definitely a five star start to the year. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for getting my reading year off to a great start!

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this great book!

I was unfamiliar with this author's work - this is not just a typical mystery. It's definitely a literary thriller, stuffed with wonderful writing, literary references, and more words that I had to look up in a book in a long time!

However, at the heart of this book is a great thriller. The story is told from two viewpoints - a hardened Pennsylvania State Trooper, Ryan DeMarco, and a bestselling author/professor, Thomas Huston. When Huston's entire family is slain and Huston goes on the run, DeMarco has to face the fact that the man he knows on a friendly basis may be guilty, even though he doesn't really believe it. Both of these men have demons to face so neither are thinking clearly as DeMarco's hunt for Huston and the truth go on.

A great book with that requisite twists and turns - don't miss it!

Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis

Told from the perspective of two men – one on the run and the other searching for him – the book was filled with suspense, mystery and darkness. Ryan DeMarco is the policeman on the case and also a friend, of sorts, to the man on the run - Thomas Huston . The murder of Huston’s entire family has caused him a bit of disassociation and a great deal of mental trauma – it has also created a target for him that he is intent on finding and also made him into a target. DeMarco spends his time trying to figure out the clues that will determine whether or not Huston was the perpetrator or a victim, too.

The novel was long, detailed, and filled with characters, backstories and descriptions. It was a good story but not the best of this genre that I have read. There were a few surprises that made me lift the rating from a three to a four because I do like a book that makes me think or surprises me. My inability to relate to either DeMarco or Huston may have impacted my enjoyment of the book although it was well plotted and crafted.

Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOK Landmarks for the ARC. This is my honest review.

3.5 Stars