Review: This is a cross between Ernest T. Bass and The Shining
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 26, 2013
In the old Andy Griffin show Ernest T. Bass ran into some difficulties in Mayberry and told Andy and Barney that he was going to go up in the mountains to be by himself or as he put it, to "hermitize" himself.  In this book, Max Carter is a millionaire who has recently come out of a messy divorce and he is doing the same thing.  He is "hermitizing" himself on a mountaintop in New Hampshire.  He has ordered some snow boots from a mail order catalog and when they don't arrive he calls Customer Service and speaks to a young lady named Miranda.Miranda apologizes that the boots have not reached him and says he will have them the next day if she has to deliver them herself, which she does even though she has to borrow a piece of heavy equipment to drive up the mountain through the heavy snow and blizzard-like conditions.I have said in other reviews that quite often while I am reading I have to suspend my sense of logic and realism.  I had to do that here but the visual I got when I read this passage was the scene from the movie, The Shining, where the cook borrows the snowcat and creeps up the mountain through that heavy snow and near zero visibility to reach the Overlook Hotel so he can check on the welfare of the caretaker's family.Of course you will remember that when he reaches the Hotel he finds a scene of carnage and death (thanks to the strange mind of Stephen King).  Fortunately, no such scene awaits Miranda when she reaches the mountaintop.  Instead of carnage and death she finds the hermitizing Max.There are often negative reviews about a book that is "unrealistic" but I don't demand that FICTION books be real or true to life because they are neither real nor true to life, nor do they claim to be.  After I suspended my sense of logic and realism I actually enjoyed it.