Review: Masterpiece from a Great Scot
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 12, 2012
Once upon a time, an acclaimed Scottish short story writer wrote four novels with high hopes...and watched decades pass while he found himself crushed under the weight of rejection. He emerged from exile with an astonishing novel called THE SURVIVAL OF THOMAS FORD. Now, day by day, the good news spreads: When an Artistic director goes slumming with a commercial thriller, the result is Martin Scorcese's CAPE FEAR...but when a Literary writer produces a thriller with love and respect, the result is THOMAS FORD. The engine of the novel is meticulously crafted: Ford, and his wife are run off the road by a joyriding punk and his pal. Ford's wife dies and he spends six-odd weeks in a coma. While he sleeps, bad trouble brews: the bird-faced punk, Jimmy McCallum, and his burly friend Robert fear that Ford may remember their faces. Jimmy has extra good reason to fear: his father's a violent, dangerous man and word of this could harm da's business...When the boys begin to scope Ford out, the book's engine proves to run on a very high octane indeed. But nothing plays out as we'd thought.  Thomas Ford isn't Bronson or Eastwood. The boys are not pure evil. Violence comes as expected, and yet...Meanwhile, Logan weaves a spell of lovely prose and carefully orchestrated images that we'll be thinking of long past The End.