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    Darkness the Color of Snow: A Novel
    Darkness the Color of Snow: A Novel
    Darkness the Color of Snow: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    Darkness the Color of Snow: A Novel

    Written by Thomas Cobb

    Narrated by Thomas Cobb

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Like No Country for Old Men and Snow Falling on Cedars, a haunting, suspenseful, and dazzlingly written novel of secrets, corruption, tragedy, and vengeance from the author of Crazy Heart—the basis of the 2009 Academy Award-winning film—an electrifying crime drama and psychological thriller in which a young cop becomes the focal point for a community’s grief and rage in the aftermath of a tragic accident.

    Out on a rural highway on a cold, icy night, Patrolman Ronny Forbert sits in his cruiser trying to keep warm and make time pass until his shift ends. Then a familiar beater Jeep Cherokee comes speeding over a hill, forcing the rookie cop to chase after it. The driver is his old friend turned nemesis, Matt Laferiere, the rogue son of a man as beaten down as the town itself.

    Within minutes, what begins as a clear-cut arrest for drunk driving spirals out of control into a heated argument between two young men with a troubled past and ends in a fatal hit and run on an icy stretch of blacktop.

    As the news spreads around town, Police Chief Gordy Hawkins remains certain that Ronny Forbert followed the rules, at least most of them, and he’s willing to stand by the young cop. But a few manipulative people in town see opportunity in the tragedy. As uneasy relationships, dark secrets, and old grievances reveal themselves, the people of this small, tightly woven community decide that a crime must have been committed, and someone—Officer Ronny Forbert—must pay a price, a choice that will hold devastating consequences for them all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 18, 2015
    ISBN9780062415769
    Author

    Thomas Cobb

    Thomas Cobb is the author of Crazy Heart, which was adapted into a 2009 Academy Award-winning film starring Jeff Bridges, and Shavetail, among other books. He grew up in southern Arizona and now lives in Rhode Island with his wife.

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    Reviews for Darkness the Color of Snow

    3.5/5

    27 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Whoa! Excellent, all the way through, top to bottom. Impressive author who does a fantastic job in the narration of his own work. Tightly written with a talented eye for character development. The story is so true to life it could be mistaken for a true story. Giving 5 stars not only because they are well deserved, but also to bring up the ratings which aren’t that good. Something I will never understand. Would love to see this over the top talented author (and narrator!) get more exposure for his work.
    • 3/5
      After Rookie Patrolman Ronnny Forbert stops a speeding car because of a burned out headlight, things quickly turn ugly. The road is icy, hilly, and dangerous. When the car finally stops, he realizes that he has a couple connections with the driver, Matt Laferiere, and two of the other passengers. The fourth passenger is still in high school. Ronny plans to issue a warning and let them go but Matt refuses to cooperate with Ronny’s routine requests, escalates the situation, and ends up being killed by a hit-and-run driver. The town in which they live has political leaders who relish being big fish, even though it is a small pond. Police Chief Gordy Hawkins tries to conduct a routine investigation to find the hit-and-run driver and close the case but one set of parents, and their lawyer, insist that Ronny murdered their son. Things go downhill from there as Ronny fights to save his reputation and job.There are several basic procedural errors, most importantly, perhaps, is not getting statements from the three others in the car before releasing them. The effect of that action affects the entire case.Small town corruption, a very insecure police officer, and plain old gossip are further complications.Interesting observations: “Excessive speed on a bad road leads to bad consequences. But what we do afterward can lead to bad perceptions in the political world.”“There’s a whole new ideology that government, in any form, is an unnecessary evil.” There’s nothing that’s looked at without suspicion.“Loneliness is not a state of being, you know. It’s a reaction to a state of being, which is simply being alone. And you chose both of them.”“The one thing that really fries me? It’s when someone sees a tragedy as an opportunity to advance themselves. The complete lack of decency.”“Time is just something people make up to worry about.”The story flows well and is basically well told. Much of it is in the form of flashbacks. There is some repetition and a couple errors that should have been caught during the editing process: “At approximately 24:30" and “He died of a staff infection.”
    • 5/5
      I won this print and agreed to give it an honest review. This is a story of guilt, vengeance, and corruption in a small town. Ronny Forbert the son of a drunk carpenter, wanted to do more with his life, as a rookie officer, he was on patrol when he spotted a car with one head light moving too fast on the black ice. He hit the lights and gave chase, but it started the downfall of one tragic event after another. With his girlfriend's ex boyfriend drunk and behind the wheel, it was a recipe for disaster.
    • 3/5
      Thomas Cobb's novel Darkness the Color of Snow is the story of a sudden and violent death and the repercussions of that death on the lives of the people inhabiting the town of Lydell. On a cold night in the last weeks before Christmas, Officer Ronny Forbert pulls over a Jeep Cherokee for speeding. Inside the Jeep is Matt Laferiere and three of his friends. All of them have been drinking and show signs of intoxication. As Forbert tries to detain Laferiere, there is a struggle, and Laferiere ends up sprawled on the highway just as another vehicle comes speeding over the rise. It's too late to do anything. Laferiere is killed and the other vehicle hardly even slows down before speeding down the highway out of sight. The tragedy occurs in the blink of an eye, but the aftermath fills the next 280 pages. Lydell is a small town and everyone either knows or has at least heard of everyone else. Matt--a small-time thief and general troublemaker--and Ronny have a history. Ronny, once a member of Matt's crew, is now dating Vanessa Woodridge, Matt's former girlfriend. The police, led by Chief Gordy Hawkins, start an investigation into the incident. Years earlier Gordy shepherded Ronny out of Matt's sphere of influence and gave him a chance to redeem himself, and Ronny made good on the promise Gordy saw in him. Gordy wants to protect Ronny from the fallout of the hit-and-run. But once Martin Glendenning, a corrupt and vindictive town counsellor, gets involved the whole thing goes off the rails. Matt's parents won't listen to reason and are convinced their son was murdered by his former friend. The media airs a story supporting that theory, complete with the testimony of an anonymous witness who claims it was indeed a murder. Soon the entire town has been whipped into a frenzy, and Gordy is being pressured to sacrifice Ronny to appease the loudest voices on the town council, who are willing to condemn the young officer before the investigation is even complete. On suspension and cast adrift, Ronny makes one bad choice after another. The story in outline has great potential and will probably make a terrific movie. Cobb is aiming for moral tragedy on the scale of Andre Dubus and Cormac McCarthy, but unfortunately falls far short. What's missing is any sense that these characters and their decisions matter. One problem is the sketchiness of the writing, which gives token acknowledgement to the emotional depth of troubled lives before skipping all too quickly on to the next event. Narrative momentum is to be commended, but in this case it comes at the expense of characterization. It's impossible to visualize the main characters because we hardly know them. We don't see the expressions on their faces. We don't see the gestures they make when they think no one is looking. The action also wraps up so abruptly it's jarring. It's as if the author grew tired of the novel he was writing and decided to move on to something else. Darkness the Color of Snow succeeds in telling an engaging story in an entertaining manner, but fails by not measuring up to the publicity blurb, which claims it is "haunting, suspenseful, and dazzlingly written."
    • 3/5
      Cobb’s novel opens with a routine traffic stop in which Ronny Forbert, a young policeman, arrests a very belligerent Matt Laferiere after he refuses to comply with standard requests for his required driver’s license and registration. Ronny handcuffs one of Matt’s hands, but Matt starts to struggle, goes into traffic, and is hit and killed by a passing car. Through flash backs, we learn that Ronny and Matt were high school classmates who hung around and got in trouble together. Ronny later matured and tried to make a career of police work, but Matt remained the eternal delinquent. Matt’s death becomes a cause célèbre, which escalates into involving a prominent citizen and the chief of police, Gordy Hawkins. Ronny is accused of police brutality, and witnesses to the key events prove to be unsure, unreliable, and, to some extent, dishonest. And it certainly doesn’t help Ronny’s situation that he is dating Matt’s former girl friend.Cobb tries to establish a motivation for a local politico power broker to harness the town’s anger over Matt’s death to ruin the career of Police Chief Hawkins. In this respect, the story is a bit strained. The ending is surprising and ironic, with a nifty plot twist. Cobb’s writing is clear and crisp, and he handles frequent changes of time effectively, providing back story through numerous flash backs. Nonetheless, I think the venom in the rivalry between police department and the local town government is a bit over the top. This is a decent read, but not worth more than 3 stars out of 5.(JAB)