Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2017
400 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
From the Edgar Award-nominated author of Shovel Ready, a blistering new thriller that Dennis Lehane calls "propulsive and meaningful".
Imagine a place populated by criminals - people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who've been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don't know if they've perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. What's clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead.
For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace - but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her - and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway. It's simmering with violence and deception, aching heartbreak and dark betrayals.
"Starred Review. Every time the reader thinks this story's turning right, it takes a hard left. But it never wanders in circles, and it does move like a championship stock car toward a climax that, however shattering, implies there's more to come." - Kirkus
"Fans of Sternbergh's earlier works (Shovel Ready; Near Enemy) will enjoy this story's clever premise, complex characters, and fast pace. Readers looking for a different kind of thriller with many twists and an explosive climax will also find much to relish." - Library Journal
"A thrilling Western unlike any you've read before." - Vulture
"A quick-paced story of crime and deception." - Dallas Morning News
"Adam Sternbergh is a genre-bender of the highest caliber. Part thriller, part Western, part pulpy whodunit, The Blinds is a propulsive and meaningful meditation on redemption and loss. It's witty, electrifying, vivid, and thoroughly original." - Dennis Lehane, author of Since We Fell
"The Blinds is brilliantly original. Fast-paced, ranging, and inventive, Adam Sternbergh's restless imagination once again conjures characters and scenarios with heartbreaking insight, peril, and startling stakes. Readers take heed; this is a hell of a ride." - Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek
"Adam Sternbergh tops my list of drop-everything-and-read novelists. With hints of Charles Willeford and Philip K. Dick, and rendered with achingly beautiful prose, The Blinds plucks the strings of Sternbergh's favored themes-identity, loss, meta-reality-creating a symphony of noirish grit and improbable grace." - Gregg Hurwitz, author of The Nowhere Man
"The Blinds is a wild, fever-dream of a novel. Posing questions about the power-and peril-of running from the past, Sternbergh's vivid vision and the people he brings to life will haunt you long after you turn the shocking final pages." - Julia Dahl, author of Invisible City and Conviction
This information about The Blinds was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Adam Sternbergh is the culture editor of the New York Times Magazine. Formerly an editor-at-large for New York, his writing has been featured in several other publications including GQ, the Times of London, and on the radio program This American Life. He lives in Brooklyn.
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