| Title | : | The Throat (Blue Rose, #3) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0451179188 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780451179180 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 704 |
| Publication | : | First published April 1, 1993 |
| Awards | : | Bram Stoker Award Best Novel (1993), World Fantasy Award Best Novel (1994) |
The Throat (Blue Rose, #3) Reviews
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“Because dead people are just like you and me, they still want things. They look at us all the time, and they miss being alive. We have taste and colour and smells and feelings, and they don’t have any of those things. They stare at us, they don’t miss anything. They really see what’s going on, and we hardly ever really see that. We’re too busy thinking about things and getting everything wrong, so we miss ninety percent of what’s happening.”
Initial Thoughts
Let's get things straight. I am Peter Straub's numero uno fan! Annie Wilkes has nothing on me. Please don't tell me you haven't heard of him. If you think Stephen King is the be all and end all of suspense fiction then you really need to broaden your horizons.
The Throat is the third book in Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy trilogy and one I've been looking forward to for quite some time. I absolutely loved the first novel Koko, which is a tense thriller set in a post-Vietnam War America. I also really enjoyed the second installment too, the aptly named sequel Mystery, where Straub gave us a loosely connected murder/mystery set a good few years before the events of Koko.
"The world is half night, and the other half is night, too."
Both novels at first appear unconnected other than a few stray sentences here and there. The Blue Rose murders, touched on briefly in both Koko and Mystery, and when you get to the Throat everything comes crashing together in spectacular, meta fashion.
The Story
Our main protagonist in this one is the person who connects all three stories together, Tim Underhill. When Timmy boy receives a phone call from his old friend John Ransom, a religious studies professor, telling him there is a Blue Rose killer copycat on the loose in Millhaven he's compelled to get involved in the John's wife April was brutally attacked and left in a coma, with the words BLUE ROSE written on a nearby wall.
Underhill wrote a book about the previous Blue Rose murders taking place in the 1940s, called The Divided Man, believing the culprit had been found. When the copycat starts leaving bodies in the same locations as the original murders all evidence points toward the real perpetrator being undiscovered. Underhill naturally wants to get to the bottom of it and uncover the truth and maybe get a new book underway in the process.
Once Underhill arrives in Millhaven things begin a downward decent along a very dark path, and was for me one of the best written mysteries I've read since...well... Straub's Koko. Each revel brought me closer to a shocking truth, which tested the limits of my miniscule brain as I pieced together this elaborate puzzle.
The Writing
I've done a number of Straub reviews now and you know I love, love, love the guys writing. He brings an unparalleled literary quality to the horror genre that is an absolute blessing for a fan like me.
The truth is, Peter Straub is criminally underrated, unappreciated and not talked about enough. His work is expertly plotted, with fantastically descriptive prose that give his novels a slower feel with a lot of depth that may not appeal to the cheap thrills generation. But if you have an ounce of patience his novels are one of the most rewarding literary experiences in the genre.
"The bell tolls, ask not for whom. The tintinnabulation that so musically wells, what a tale their terror tells, how the danger sinks and swells."
The Throat is a first person narrative from the perspective of our main man Tim Underhill. The same reclusive author who the characters in Koko spent the first half of that novel trying to track down. It's a style that lends itself to the mystery genre extremely well as it puts you in the headspace of the person at the centre of things that's trying to piece it all together.
The story itself is a veritable maze, with various threads and clues intersecting and pulling you in various directions. It's an absolute beast of a book, and theres a lot of pages to get through, but it is in no way overwritten. As you come to learn with Straub, by the end of the story every single word counts. And I mean every goddamn word.
Straub uses flashbacks and dreams to amazing effect in this one and the past with the present to provide a detailed history to current events. A good portion of this is set during the Vietnam War and in my opinion provides some of the best scenes in the book.
I'll finish this section by saying that Straub, more than any other author in the horror genre, is a master of atmosphere and mood. His descriptive detail is absolutely top notch and there's one fog filled scene that absolutely had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Pure brilliance!
The Characters
The Throat is in my humble opinion some of the best, if not the best, character work I've seen from this author. The entire cast is detailed and authentic, with each one feeling different and an important aspect of the story.
Our main boy Timothy Underhill, who was a bit of a side character in Koko, is the focus of proceed in this one and as a result one of Straub’s most compelling characters to date. To the point where if I was asked my favourite in one of his novels I'd probably go with him. Although I'd feel like I was cheating on Ricky Hawthorne from Ghost Story. Straub really does write the elder gentleman better than anyone else.
"That moment could not be held in the mind, because it held terror and ecstasy so great they threatened to tear the body apart."
Like Stephen King is famous for writing authors that mirror himself into his novels, I really got the impression that Straub was writing himself in the form of Underhill. I love it when an author does this as you really feel like your getting acquainted with their mind and psyche.
One of the side characters, Walter Dragonette, a serial killer who is reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer is a feature of a number of chapters at the start. His presentation and the detailed accounts he provides are as rivetting as they are chilling. It's something that remains with you after finishing this one.
Final Thoughts
Holy smoke how long have I been writing for? Anyone still reading. If you are then give yourself a medal and have a beer on me!
I read this one as part of a buddy read with the legendary Corey Woodcock and can thoroughly recommend this approach if you've got someone available to listen to your endlessly boring chatter. Straub discusses a number of heavy themes including memory and trauma, as well as the ghosts of the past and their reluctance to stay buried. There's a wealth of stuff to discuss here.
I'll finish by saying that although this could be read as a standalone, to get the most out of it you should at least be reading Koko first. It will give you a full picture of what's going on in The Throat, plus it's an amazing book in it's own right.
1983 a very young, but still bald, Peter Straub with lesser known author
So by the length of this review you can probably tell I loved this book. Easily one of my favourite reads of 2022. Having been somewhat aware of Peter Straub in my younger days, I've now come to realise just what a brilliant author he is. If you're not well acquainted with his work do yourself a favour and put that right starting now. Thanks for reading. Cheers! -
The Throat is an often brilliant thriller that is concerned with big questions about identity, the past and our memory of it, the demons that shape us and the demons we carry with us. It is intricately structured, densely layered, full of eerie and haunting dreams and flashbacks, and is impressively thoughtful in its take on murder and vengeance. As a third book in a trilogy, it also must extend and wrap up storylines started in the preceding novels Koko and Mystery – and for the most part it delivers. But sadly, the novel is a deeply flawed one. There are many minor irritations that I could look past, but I can’t ignore the flaw at its heart: its terrible mismanagement of a certain key character. The person at the heart of the novel seems to be the character that Straub lost all interest in fairly early on – which leaves the novel with a hollow core rather than one that should have been full of mystery and meaning.
Synopsis: Tim Underhill from Koko and Tom Pasmore from Mystery come together to solve a series of killings by a resurfaced – or new? – Blue Rose Killer. The Blue Rose killings and their legacy lived in the corners and shadows of prior novels and so I was full of anticipation in seeing them given their due.
It is a strange experience to read a book, admire the technical skill of its writing, and spend hours upon hours living in its world (The Throat is nearly 700 pages long)... and end up feeling utterly disappointed. And yet I don’t feel like I wasted my time. Straub is a masterful writer. This novel reconfirmed to me that he is the yin to Stephen King’s yang, the coolly intellectual brain to King’s bloodily beating heart. King has kinetic characters who jump off the page just as his narratives can spin messily out of control. Straub has dispassionate, contemplative ciphers as characters who live in stories that, despite being both lengthy and dreamily ambiguous, are still narratives that are carefully mapped out. I don’t think one writer is better than the other; they are both masters. I enjoy Straub's intelligence, his concentration, even his quasi-Jungian flourishes. Although it was ultimately a disappointment, it was a fascinating experience and I don’t regret the many hours spent within its pages.“Then the nightly miracle took place once again, and I fell down into the throat of my novel.”
SPOILERS FOLLOW. ALSO, a lot of bitching. So if you loved this book, you may just want to skip the rest.
Okay, the minor irritations. First: there is a very sloppy bit of meta-nonsense in the beginning where Peter Straub is a character in the novel; this is done to resolve the problem of Mystery’s island setting - which is incompatible with the story started with Koko and ending with The Throat. That sloppiness casts a shadow on the characters of Underhill and Pasmore, who now confusingly seem to have the same childhoods. Or not, who knows – Straub doesn’t clear things up. Second: the setting of Millhaven is schizophrenically portrayed: at times a small town where everyone knows everyone and you can easily walk from one end to the other in the space of a couple hours, at other times a highly dangerous city of industry (365 murders a year! For real?) modeled on Chicago or Milwaukee or Detroit. Third: by the middle of the book I easily figured out the identities of all three killers: Old Killer, New Killer, Surprise Killer. It was obvious to me and I am no Tom Pasmore: the Bad Man, the Good Man, and the Catalyst (for the story itself) are all too-clearly telegraphed as the killers on numerous occasions. Fourth: Lt. Bachelor is compelling but is also a second-rate Colonel Kurtz, living in his Vietnam era heart of darkness. Fifth: the use of race riots as a backdrop in a novel that itself doesn’t engage with race or racial tensions felt disrespectful and cheap.
I could actually have looked past all of those things and still given this novel a somewhat qualified thumbs up. But the laziness in dealing with central character John Ransom just drove me up the wall. This is a character who is the catalyst for the entire novel. He is given an intriguing introduction that sets him up to be fascinatingly multidimensional; his flashback appearances in Vietnam are likewise interesting. But that is not the character we spend the most time with – instead we get a John Ransom who is a petty, whiny, greedy dipshit who exists to bitch, moan, roll his eyes, and make a series of foolish mistakes. He becomes a tedious drag to the story whenever he appears. John Ransom needed to be an ambiguous creation, evasive and mysterious yet real enough to come alive on the page – practically every other page, because he’s that much of a lynchpin to The Throat’s narrative. He needed to be resonant; instead he is flat, flat, flat. Fie, Straub, fie! The heart of darkness is not a petulant douchebag. -
The Throat brings Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy to an end. A massive volume, spanning almost 700 pages, it requires a solid investment of time, attention and emotions. The curtains are slowly rolled up, revealing a stage set in Millhaven, Illinois, a fictional city modeled on Straub's own hometown of Millwauke. Although very loosely related, the three novels - Koko, Mystery and The Throat do form a coherent whole, along with certain short stories from Houses Without Doors and Magic Terror. Even though Koko and Mystery can be read separately, knowledge of both is needed to fully appreciate The Throat.
Koko was a big novel with a large ensemble cast of characters, taking place in several countries. Some readers complained about its lenght and meandering plot. However, I found the lenght and all plot tangents not only justified but necessary to develop real, human drama. With superb characterization skills and attention to detail Straub's novel literally jumps to life, and ink which forms letters which form sentences on the page are but a window which we can open and look through, and breathe. Straub himself admits that when writing this novel he had a sort of an out of body experience, where he found himself on a street, right next to his characters, hearing their talk, along with all the city squalor, feeling it. Having read the novel I am compelled to believe him. Long and seemingly without focus Koko has proven to be a ghost story of the most terrible sort - the one where all the ghosts are still alive.
Mystery on the other hand was a complete depart from the large scope and volume of Koko. Noticeably shorter, it's set entirely on a small Carribean island of Millwalk, where the rich play and rest. It's focused almost entirely on two new characters - Tom Passmore and Lamont von Heilitz. Set in the 60's, Mystery combines a bildungsroman together with a mystery novel (of course), sparkled with a sort of Ray Bradbury's sense of nostalgia, growing up, endless summers, slanted sunlight and dust moles in the air. The hero, Tom Passmore, becomes fascinated, obsessed with mysteries and crimes literally by accident - he is hit in a car and reads old paperbacks in the hospital. As he is dismissed he decides to explore his newfound passion and seting one foot after the other basically uncovers a deeply troubling secret of the island and its inhabitants. This draws him to reclusive Lamont von Heilitz, a Sherlock Holmes like figure, a self proclaimed "amateur of crime". The two bond quickly and together try to put together the pieces of the puzzle. The theme of a secluded island, growing up and all its troubles and glories, relationships, families and of course the engrossing mystery all combine into a novel which although subtle delivers its punch and works on every level.
The Throat is the final call to arms; it combines the theme of Blue Rose murders, introduced in Koko, drawing a character from that novel, the writer Tim Underhill, and his memories and personal demons. Tom Passmore also makes an appearance and becomes involved in the case; The Throat brings the two novels and several short stories and unites them, standing as a necessary end and a way for them to relate to each other.
Underhill receives a call from his old acquaintance, John Ransom, whose wife has been brutally beaten and is in a coma. What is special about the assault is not the brutality, though, but the fact that the attacker left a message on a wall above the unconscious woman. Just two words - BLUE ROSE - but for Underhill these two words open old and well locked doors of his mind and memory.
I enjoy when writers create their own universe; create worlds where events and characters appear several times, and them and their actions are related to each other, influence the works, make a difference subtle yet visible for a constant reader. Stephen King is a master of this, especially when one reads his masterwork which is the saga of the Dark Tower (BTW. Bango Skank, a graffiti artist mentioned there, originally appeared in a Straub short story). With his Blue Rose novels and stories Straub does the same thing, which gives plenty of opportunity for rereading and what pleasantly comes with it - reenjoyment.
The theme of homecoming - Underhill is drawn from his comfy New York loft where he lives safely just next to his friends, back to Millhaven, his hometown. The rich atmosphere of a small town is well drawn, and a common theme of Straub - past influencing the present - is present more than ever. Though influencing might be a bad word - biting back would be the right one. There is a lot in this novel that bites and leaves marks, these of the non-visible kind, too. As Underhill tries to fit back into the life he once led here, he discovers that even though everything is familiar nothing really is. To discuss the plot would spoil it; each small revelation is a delightful surprise even if the revelation itself is not so delightful, but troubling and disturbing. The THroat isn't a quick read; it's densely written, with long descriptive passages, complex characterization, and a plot which unfolds on several levels. However, it is a necessary book; a book which had to be written to do justice to these characters and their lives and tribulations.
These books are really a peculiar bunch. Even though they were all bestsellers, they didn't seem to achieve the popularity status of other popular authors of the genre, and even though some critics recognized their potential and worth they didn't seem to develop a lasting legacy. They are stated to form a trilogy but this is no Lord of the Rings; the interlinking between them is vague and downright obscure, visible only to the keenest eye. Although they all are separate entities, their full power is only visible when they form a whole. They require a lot of reading time and it's never really clear who the intended reader should be - a reader of general crime fiction? Someone interested in war? Reader of literature? Readers of psychological horror? The only possible answer seems to be: all of them.
Nevertheless, I found these three books and connected stories to be memorable, and the overall effect of reading them lingering; more often than not a phrase or two returns to me, a sentence; a scene flashes across my mind invoking the feeling of dread, suspense, attention or sadness. The style of these books is polished and unique to each one and it's impossible to memorize all phrases and descriptions and dialogues that could possibly catch the eye and emotion; too many scenes are memorable for all sorts of reasons. These books and stories all form a whole but at the same time are all unique, each their own; With passing time I might find it difficult to reconstruct them purely from memory, especially when they all concentrate on the same things in a different way. But these emotions, sentences and scenes keep coming back to me from the depths of my memories and I turn my senses towards them, trying to grasp as much as I can. -
I started this trilogy several years ago but got waylaid somewhere along the way and realized that I had never read how it ended. I corrected that right away. I'm really glad I still had all the books. Tim Underhill and John Ransom once again are solving a mystery that starts in Vietnam and ends in Millhaven, Illinois. What became known as the "Blue Rose" murders of years ago are being imitated by another killer, who may be an admirer of the original killer. Tim Underhill returns to his hometown to do what the police can't...solve the crimes. I think of the 3 books, this one is the most disturbing...although all three are gritty and scary. They can also be read as a trilogy or as standalones. Peter Straub keeps you guessing and at some point, you will suspect every character in this book until you finally find out who it is. An amazing climax to a really outstanding trilogy. If you would like to read the trilogy in order the books are Mystery, Koko, and The Throat.
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4 Stars
This isn’t the easiest book to read with multiple layers and a lot of gore! Not for the faint hearted!
The only reason this didn’t get more star is because I felt it was slightly stretched out to make 700 pages and I think he could’ve cut at least 100 pages from this.
I fully enjoyed this book – but needed breaks between the read! There are plenty of twist and turns to keep you attention throughout! There are also some sexist depictions of women in this book which is a little off putting.
"Because dead people are just like you and me, they still want things. They look at us all the time, and they miss being alive. We have taste and color and smell and feelings, and they don’t have any of those things.
They stare at us, they don’t miss anything. They really see what’s going on, and we hardly ever really see that. We’re too busy thinking about things and getting everything wrong, so we miss ninety percent of what’s happening."
Definitely worth a read! I will be re-reading these in order as I got them all mixed up the first time (Doh!) -
”There is another world, and it is this world…”
After coming off of Mystery, two Blue Rose-related stories in Houses Without Doors, and a reading of A Prayer For Owen Meaney, Peter Straub was apparently so geared up to write this novel that he began writing it on a legal pad while sitting with his family in an airport departure lounge waiting to leave for a vacation to France, while his family looked on in amazement and his daughter Emma cheered him on. This novel shows it—Straub was so tuned into his characters and the world of Millhaven here, and it starts on the first page with huge revelations, right off the bat. This is a perfect ending to one of the best trilogies I’ve ever read.
The Blue Rose Trilogy begins with Koko, a brilliant novel that remains my favorite in the series (and also one of my favorite novels of all time), and (kind of) ends here, though Straub couldn’t stay away from Millhaven and some of these characters, and returned to this world with lost boy lost girl and in the night room. This book picks up with Tim Underhill and addresses the Blue Rose murders directly. We start off with two timelines, an extraordinary Vietnam sequence that revisits some characters we know from Koko and gives us some more background on Underhill himself and some other characters that will pop up in the present, and the modern murder-mystery aspect. To boil this book down to simply being a murder mystery, however, is inaccurate and unfair. It casts a very wide net and is more of a general meditation on violence; full of red herrings, dead ends, and a maze of possibilities. This book is about the shocking violence that curdles beneath any normal city in the US. And once again, which is a theme not only in the Blue Rose books but most of Straub’s fiction in general, we have the question of the past’s effect on the present. Those little secrets that never really go away, and show their ugly face time and time again.
This novel is filled with excellent characters—complex characters. One of my favorites is an old man named Alan Brookner, father of one of the murder victims. This is a man slipping not-so-subtly into the grips of Alzheimer’s Disease. His sections in this book are heartbreaking and touching, and I was happy every time this character showed up. Straub is usually known for his cool, intellectual approach to character and not always sentiment and touching emotional moments, but he certainly pulled some good ones off here. Underhill himself serves as both the Everyman vessel for the story, and a character with his own troubled history both in and out of Vietnam. However, the most well drawn character of the novel has to be John Ransom, a man who’s incredible service in Vietnam has direct ties to the heart of the whole mystery. He is a troubled man, “poisoned by the past”—his time in Vietnam and his lack of a real life afterwards. Overall, the character work here is among Straub’s best, likely even better than in Koko. In fact, the Vietnam sections of this book were so good, that my only real complaint about the novel is that there was precious little of it. There is a first hand account of a Colonel Beaufort Runnel here—sort of a book within a book—that is so damned good I actually went back and read this section twice. Once again, Straub did his research on the war and wrote about it in sickening detail.
Straub is like a jazz musician. He has a melody that he knows by heart. He never strays too terribly far from it, but he dances all around it, sometimes throwing in some wild chromatic runs, but he always lands where he needs to and always knows what he’s doing. He changes keys throughout the course of his song and experiments with different styles. I am well aware of what an unapologetic Peter Straub fanboy I am becoming. I believe his writing is among the very best the genre has to offer. It’s complicated, smart, dark and absolutely fearless. His writing has really showed me as much as anyone else what words on a page are capable of, and he is an inspiration. If only I had one hundredth the talent this guy had, perhaps I could write something readable!
If you are a horror fan and haven’t read Straub, there are very few authors, if any, I would urge you to check out more. If you are familiar with him but haven’t read the Blue Rose Trilogy, what are you waiting for? These books are among his best works and are chock full of gold. And lastly, I also urge any potential reader not to read these books out of order. They are a trilogy, they are intimately connected, and they really need to be read in order. I’m going to say it—the dreaded “M” word—the Blue Rose Trilogy is a masterpiece. When reading Ghost Story (another brilliant novel and a genuine contender for my favorite horror novel), my buddy Dave, who I’ve also read this trilogy with over the last year or so, referred to Straub as “the Charles Dickens of horror”, and every Straub novel I read just confirms that statement!
Read it. You won’t regret it. 4.5/5 -
This is the final book of a trilogy. This can be read as a stand alone but one might miss some little subtexts if the first two books were not read. In this one, Tim gets a call from a friend back in Millhaven. His friend's wife has been murdered and it looks like she is a victim of the Blue Rose murderer which we explored in the first book of this trilogy.
This was a terrific conclusion to this trilogy. I would classify this novel as a murder mystery but with more depth. Sure, there is the journey to discover the murderer and the various red herrings as we inch closer to the reveal. The aspect that separates this mystery is the layer upon layer that is slowly peeled back throughout this book. These layers span years and various locations. I have said before that Peter Straub is a master of the slow burn and once again he proves it in this book. While reading this book you might be reading something mundane or something that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actual story before you realize that everything has a purpose and relevant. This is not a light hearted book and this book requires the reader to pay attention. It is well worth paying attention as we get twist after twist which kept me wondering the whole time about the mystery.
I believe this book is the best one of the trilogy with all of them being enjoyable. Once again, Straub does a wonderful job with grabbing the reader's hand and leading them down a path that enthralls them. I love how he does it too as his books don't start off with a bang. He slowly enthralls you and before you know it you cannot tear yourself away from the book. That is what happened to me during this one. -
This complex novel is the third in the loosely connected trilogy which began with Koko and continued with Mystery (one of my favourite books). It is told from the viewpoint of Tim Underhill, a main character in Koko, and features Tom Pasmore, the protagonist of Mystery. Tim is summoned back to his hometown by an old friend, John Ransom, who he met through football games at high school but went on to encounter in Vietnam, where it was clear that Ransom had gone to some very dark places indeed. He claims to be healed by his time in an asram in India but it is clear as the novel progresses that he is a simmering timebomb of pentup anger. John's wife has been beaten and knifed into a coma, and it seems there is a connection with the 1950s series of murders which were given the name 'Blue Rose' and which were introduced in the earlier books.
Tim helps John investigate, and is drawn into an increasingly convoluted web of corruption involving the police force. There are actually three serial killers in the story, and two have to be uncovered by Tim, with the assistance of Tom Pasmore.
This is a very difficult story to read despite the superior quality of the writing. Partly because the themes are very difficult, including child abuse, murder on a large scale, and some grisly passages set in Vietnam which yet have a connection to the book's present. And partly because there are so many parallel mysteries being interwoven that it is difficult to keep tabs on them all. I was left with the impression that one or two things hadn't been explained, but by the end couldn't remember what they were. This is definitely a book that would benefit from more than one read and I am retaining it for that.
One peculiar aspect near the beginning is that the two earlier books are supposed to have been written by Tim Underhill in collaboration with the actual author, and the major incident in Tom Pasmore's childhood - his being hit by a car and spending months in hospital - actually happened to Tim, but for a different reason than the one stated in 'Mystery'. Yet later, Tom tells Tim what his mentor Lamont von Helitz told him years ago on their plane ride back from the lake resort (as shown in 'Mystery'), as if he has never told him about it before, and yet of course that appeared in that novel.
I think some readers were not happy with the development of a certain character in the novel and yet I didn't have a problem with this. It seemed obvious early on that the character was a very troubled soul - something that became increasingly clear especially when the incidents in Vietnam were taken into account. That character's arc contained a powerful twist compounded by the misdirection that occurred earlier along those lines. The many twists in the novel added to the suspense. I especially loved the appearances of Tom who was a big favourite of mine from the earlier book. I only think it a little unfortunate that the author gave his two characters such similar first names. There was also a typo in the scene set in the old cinema where 'John' is named instead of 'Tom' - that did jar somewhat. But overall I rate this at 4 stars, not quite as good for me as 'Mystery'. -
Well, I’ve done it. I’ve completed Peter Straub’s epic work, the centerpiece of his career, his Blue Rose trilogy. In true Straubian fashion, these books are challenging and dense and unsettling — I am sure a lot of the subtext went right over my head. Will I reread this trilogy? You betcha ass.
The Throat is oft considered the best of the trilogy, and while it does wrap the cycle up perfectly I think I do prefer the setting and plot of Mystery. But don’t get me wrong: it’s close! I’ve given all these novels five stars.
So what can I say about this book that a.) wouldn’t give away important plot points, and b.) wouldn’t reveal my sure ignorance? Nothing. What I can say is make sure you read Koko and Mystery before this one for maximum enjoyment.
As I told Mr Straub himself on Twitter, while reading this tome I often had to remind myself I was reading fiction. Tim Underhill and Tom Passmore and all the others feel so real, so vivid, it almost seems as though they and the world they inhabit is a real place of long-ago, and Straub is only reporting the facts. But this is fiction . . . some of the best damn fiction I’ve read this year. Recommended. -
I thought the Blue Rose trilogy was slightly underwhelming overall, but can't argue that the final installment delivered a bolder, more convincing and intricate mystery than the prior two volumes.
What makes THE THROAT more compelling than MYSTERY or KOKO is that it reveals important twists about the first two volumes in the first twenty pages of the novel and forces you to gain a different perspective on them throughout your reading. It even reexplores themes like trauma, which KOKO was pretty extensive about, in a new light.
Sure, it's a little paunchy around the middle like the two others. It gets awkwardly cerebral between pages 300 and 450. Unlike for the previous volumes, THE THROAT works its way around these issues, though and it makes for a compelling, timeless mystery. -
Cuando Peter Straub es bueno ( como en GHOSTS ) es acojonaste, poderoso y te atrapa, pero cuando es aburrido ( como en SI PUDIERAS VERME AHORA) es lento,denso y no te interesa mucho el destino de los personajes .Este libro se ubica en la mitad, en partes que te atrapan y empiezas a creer quien es el asesino, pero te desespera cuando te explican cada rincón y esquina de la ciudad. Asesinos en serie, traumas en Vietnam, niños abusados, detectives amateurs, policias duros y cerrados...o sea, todo ya ha sido visto, pero aun así, te atrapa aunque en ocasiones te desespera y quieres lanzarlo por la ventana. Muy buenas las ultimas 100 paginas.
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I read this book a long time ago but I remember really loving it. I want to read it again! I read KoKo right afterwards.
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A LARGE (697 pages) tome, mostly a complex, multi-layered mystery, combined with some grossness (he DID write "Ghost Story," and collaborated with Stephen King on "The Talisman" and "Black House," both of which I highly recommend, after all) and both childhood and Vietnam trauma, vividly depicted. Complicated relationships, corruption, interesting characters, and a very satisfying ending, indeed overall a very satisfying read. Someone else did say that the description of computer savvy from 1994 is quaintly laughable in today's e-world, but doesn't detract from the story. My favorite passage is early in the book when the main character, Tim Underwood, describes his initial days in Vietnam. Goes like this:
Every day I reported to a cynical captain named McCue, Hamilton McCue, who rubbed his square fingers over his babyish pink cheeks and assigned me to whatever task took his momentary fancy. I moved barrels from beneath the latrine and poured kerosene into them so old Vietnamese women could incinerate our shit...
Well, that was me, at Fire Base Alpha, being a Medic I was on Hygiene Patrol, where once a week I did the same thing, although it was me and not the Vietnamese women who did the burning. Well, people kinda left you alone that day...
My first Five Stars for a book, highly recommend it! -
Amazing. Take the best Stephen King you ever read, and then throw in Apocalypse Now, Sherlock Holmes, and more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing. Can't rec the "Blue Rose" trilogy enough. -
Excellent murder mystery with twists that keep you guessing to the very end. Tim Underhill is always a fun read. Love him!
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The Throat. Peter Straub 1993. (Blue Rose #3).
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I could just direct you “mark’s review” on goodreads for this as it sums up most of my thoughts, feelings and questions about this series; but that would be lazy so here goes...
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This third book brings favourites Tim Underhill from ‘Koko’ and Tom Pasmore from ‘Mystery’ together, books which I originally didn’t think were that closely related, and really ties everything up... but by no means perfectly.
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I feel like I have an interesting relationship with Straub in that I love his writing and style, the way he incorporates things like music, art, psychology, humanity and in this case a bit of Gnosticism (which doesn’t really lead anywhere) to create a sophisticated detective mystery vibe; more than the way he handles overall plot of these books.
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Multiple eras, settings and generations of killers, multiple names, pseudonyms, leads, revelations, mysteries on top of mysteries and even some meta inclusion of Straub himself all left me feeling like I was only just holding on to a vague understanding throughout. Maybe that is the point or maybe it all could have been written more clearly.
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My main disappointment is that I feel like Straub could have delved into the mindset of the killer/killers far more and missed an opportunity there. Underhill was great but Pasmore ended up sitting on the sidelines throughout. Other main characters like John Ransom started strong and then petered out. I feel like reading the whole series again to see if I can gain a clearer understanding, but maybe that won’t make a difference. I know there are other ‘Blue Rose’ related short stories and other books featuring Underhill that might make the whole picture more complete and I am keen to continue reading those.
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An enjoyable but perplexing book and series!
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3.75 ⭐️
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#peterruysbookreviews .
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Thanks for sharing the Blue Rose journey with me @sally_lovesbooks , a pleasure as always! 🙌🕵🏻♂️🕵🏻♀️😊. Also thanks for sending me this sweet edition what seems like a lifetime ago! 🙏
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This is an incredibly disappointing final book in the Blue Rose trilogy that feels supererogatory. It is way too long, incredibly tedious, often unpleasant to read, and so obdurately committed to a dry procedural that it's a wonder I soldiered onto the end. I very much enjoyed KOKO and MYSTERY. And, in theory, the combination of Tim Underhill and Tom Pasmore teaming up to solve Underhill's sister's murder (while trying to nail down a copycat Blue Rose murderer) SHOULD have worked. Straub sets up a promising framework of unreliable narrators. But Straub ultimately has no heart here. This is a cold and lifeless collection of interviews and investigations that is just relentlessly without vivacity or humanity. And, for the most part, I hated reading this book. It was only Straub's craft that kept me reading. I'm stunned by how many people bought into this codswallop. Straub was definitely a talented horror/mystery writer, but this ain't it, chief.
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Very intriguing, labyrinthine mystery novel considered the final book of the Blue Rose trilogy by Peter Straub. Intricate study on what we view as reality doesn’t necessarily make it an absolute truism. It took some time to get through this book as at times it seemed to be meandering a bit and I would find myself reading little at a time or place it down for several days which is not in my natural character as an avid reader. There would be mentions of a name, a place, a situation, that I would vaguely remember in some instances and would then backtrack so as to not get lost for the upcoming revelations. It’s that kind of book. However, put the work in and the reward is far greater than the price to get there. Recommended.
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3.5 stars
I picked up this book at a thrift sale back in 2015 because I recognized the name Peter Straub, but then after coming home found out that it was the third book of a trilogy and promptly left it untouched on my book-shelf for 5 years. It took the lockdown and me running out of books to read that made me pull it out. After ascertaining that it could be read as a stand-alone, and reading Koko and Mystery wasn't necessary to understand The Throat, I proceeded. The Throat is a page-turner, and despite its length, manages to engage throughout. It was a good refresher for me, something different from what I've been reading recently. I think i found a few jumps and deux ex machinae which annoyed me but I guess overall it was a decent read. -
This culmination of the Blue Rose Trilogy deftly mixes mystery and horror genre with literary metafiction. A bit overlong, but overall quite excellent.
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Fantastic. Straub at his best.
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Overall this was an intriguing book--and series--to read, and made me appreciate Straub's non-horror work. I was on the last 100 pages when news of his passing broke. His literary voice will be missed.
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Story 5/5
Narration 5/5
Excellent! -
An alcoholic homicide detective in my hometown of Millhaven, Illinois, William Damrosch, died to ensure, you might say, that this book would never be written. But you write what comes back to you, and then afterward it comes back to you all over again.
In 1979, an American author named Peter Straub became a mainstream writer of horror when he published GHOST STORY, the novel that would thrust this previously not-well-known author into the same grimy, dark spotlight that had shone upon Stephen King. Despite not being his first novel, GHOST STORY was the book that launched Straub forward, and I sometimes wonder what the literary world, the enjoyment of readers all over the world, would be like if this horrific novel hadn't been written. Straub went on to write a batch of bestselling novels that terrified those who read them, scoring himself Bram Stoker and August Derleth Awards, even being nominated for a World Fantasy Award. However, after the publication of THE TALISMAN in '84, the winner of a World Fantasy Award and a Locust Fantasy Award which was co-written with King, something happened to Straub. He began to lose confidence in himself, and soon dread fell over him like a tattered cloak. He feared that he had lost his gift; he feared that he would never write a good novel again.
Then, in '88, Straub released a PTSD-driven thriller called KOKO following four (well, technically five) former Vietnam veterans as they chased an obscure figure from their past. Despite being a departure from Straub's usual elements of supernatural horror, KOKO was still gritty enough to terrify fans and won the following year's World Fantasy Award. In 1990, Straub released a sequel to his dark adventure called MYSTERY, a lighter novel than its predecessor which won a Bram Stoker Award and was nominated for a WFA. It was loosely connected to KOKO by a reference to a series of killings named the Blue Rose Murders, which were hinted at in KOKO by a character named Timothy Underhill. These two novels formed the first two parts of the Blue Rose Trilogy, which was concluded in 1993 when Straub's Bram Stoker-winning thriller THE THROAT was released. This novel is the basis of our review, so it would help if I were to actually go into the book itself instead of explaining the context of it.
Decades ago, the town of Millhaven was rocked by a series of gruesome murders, each body found with the words BLUE ROSE scrawled nearby. However, the killings stopped when the investigating detective committed suicide; judging by the note written on the desk before his body, the public assumed that this man was, in fact, the Blue Rose Killer. Decades later, author Timothy Underhill—whose sister was killed all those years ago, though the identity of her murderer is still unknown—is called by an old friend whose wife has been beaten into a coma. He claims that the Blue Rose Killer is to blame, and shares Underhill's belief that the killer never died; that the detective who committed suicide was actually innocent, and that the real culprit ran free. Reluctant to help, Underhill eventually comes to aid his friend. However, the Millhaven he returns to is now the slaughtering-grounds of a bloodthirsty killer. As new murders rock the town, claiming lives and terrifying those who are spared, Underhill—aided by a wide cast of allies such as Tom Pasmore, the protagonist of MYSTERY—must travel to the dark places within himself and confront human demons in order to stop the Blue Rose Killer. However, during his investigation, Underhill unearths a series of shocking secrets about Millhaven that will put not only his own life at risk, but also the foundations that the town exists upon.
It was as if some terrible secret lay buried beneath the headstones, in the way a more vibrant, more realistic Millhaven burned and glowed beneath the surfaces of everything I saw.
Despite tying the previous two novels in the Blue Rose Trilogy together, Straub uses THE THROAT to do so in a way that you probably won't expect. It is revealed in the novel that KOKO and MYSTERY were novels written by Underhill, but concerned mostly-true events which concerned him; the latter was about Tom Pasmore, who is a person who lived in Millhaven and who was a detective, yet never lived on the island that MYSTERY was set on. It'll make more sense if you read it, but don’t expect THE THROAT to be an orthodox conclusion or a run-of-the-mill sequel.
During the course of our telephone conversations in the middle of the night that sometimes lasted for two and three hours, I had sometimes imagined that Tom Pasmore started drinking when he got out of bed and stopped only when he managed to get back into it. He was the loneliest person I had ever met.
I think that almost every Peter Straub novel I have read has dealt with the past coming back in horrifying ways: in the Tom Sawyer series, the events which transpire in THE TALISMAN strike at the protagonist in BLACK HOUSE; KOKO follows men who must confront something that happened in their shared past; in MYSTERY, a decades-old murder is the key focus of the plot; and FLOATING DRAGON finds the descendants of a town’s creators being forced to face a dark presence that their ancestors inadvertently brought into existence. However, the past’s impacts on the present are never as clear in those novels as they are in THE THROAT, entire chapters (or, technically, sub-chapters) being dedicated to Underhill’s musings on how his arrival in Millhaven has caused a bout of feelings related to the significance of events that took place years ago and how they seem to be reaching towards him in the present.
I wanted to tear the past apart, to dismember it on a bloody table.
I cannot convey to you, in words, how excited to read THE THROAT I was. Ever since I finished MYSTERY, I eagerly anticipated the day that I would pick up this hefty volume and open it. However, because I wanted to receive the full emotional punch of this epic conclusion, I decided to wait until the next school holidays so that I wouldn’t be distracted by a daunting amount of assessments. Sadly, I finished MYSTERY towards the start of that term, so I had to wait about eight weeks. Two days before the school holidays started (four if you count the weekend), I gave up and decided to start THE THROAT, citing my desire to read multiple books on the holidays as my reason. Since I can’t travel back in time to change things, I’m not too sure whether it would have been better to wait until the holidays or at least the weekend, but I do know that, despite starting THE THROAT early, I still enjoyed it.
Before I compliment any other aspect of THE THROAT—and trust me when I say that we have fair bit of ground to cover—I will first praise, for the [insert the number of novels by Straub I have read] time, the prose in which this tome is written. The writing style never feels forced, and makes an 875-page epic breeze by with little to no feelings of boredom. Well, for me, anyway, but I’m sure that a majority of those who gave this book five stars agree. As an example of Straub’s master skills at writing, I will present this pinkie-sized quote:
She lit the cigarette with a match, tossed the match into a blackened copper ashtray, blew out a white feather of smoke, and sat down.
That is only a single sentence, and yet Straub paints a vivid picture in that sentence while other authors struggle to do so in an entire paragraph. As I’ve said many times before, this man has skill.
Now it is time to delve into the magic of THE THROAT which is exclusive to it. The first of these spells to be mentioned in this review shall be the complexity of the plot. While I’ll admit that there is a bit of filler in the novel (though all good novels have sections of fat, which I believe actually make them better), almost every page is dedicated to Underhill and Co. either investigating an aspect of the mystery or discovering a brand new one. While most other authors would just try to solve the Blue Rose murders in a straight-forward way, Straub goes all-out in his conclusion to the series, outdoing even the whodunnit-skills presented in MYSTERY. The multipolar nature of THE THROAT’s plot is like a rainbow (which is ironic when you consider Underhill’s homosexuality, which I will talk about later on): while made up of multiple unique and colourful different parts, they all form the same structure and, if you enjoy following this beautiful shape, can lead you to a pot of shimmering gold at its end.
I’d like to talk about the homosexuality presented in the story via its main character, Tim Underhill. Now, I’m just going to put this out there: I’m a Christian. However, that doesn’t mean that I hate gay people; in fact, I’m for their rights, and believe that if God truly hated homosexuality, he could have eradicated it the moment it emerged. If you disagree with the acceptance of gay and lesbian people, then you have the right to believe that, but it is my personal belief that homosexuality is in no way a sin in the eyes of anyone except for those among Christianity who want to hide their homophobia and disregard of equality behind God (I mean, come on, guys, just say you don’t like them and get on with it). Now that we have that out of the way, let’s actually talk about Underhill. Prior to reading THE THROAT, I read an article by a gay man who praised Straub’s depiction of a homosexual character; the author of the article was pleased by the fact that Underhill’s sexuality didn’t define him, but was instead just a trait that he had. I may not have agreed if I hadn’t read this article, but I can definitely see where the author is coming from; never does Underhill approach some random person, tap them on the shoulder and say, I’m a gay guy, just so you know. He doesn’t spend chapters upon chapters emphasising how he is gay, and the fact that he is gay barely comes up. In fact, for a while I had almost forgotten that he was homosexual, which is what the author of that article probably meant: while Underhill is a gay man, it isn’t the super-duper-plot-device that you absolutely have to remember. To be honest, I think that the fact that a gay man has praised Straub’s depiction of homosexuality, then that means that means more than what one can put into words.
Now that that’s out of the way, why don’t we look at the characterisation in general? For a novel told in first-person, THE THROAT does a smashing job of making almost every one of its characters complex, fleshed-out people who could probably be picked from its pages and comfortably placed in the real world. I think that this is why the filler in THE THROAT feels necessary to its quality; without these “boring bits”, we would never really get the character development that they offer. For example: while the “real funeral” scene, in which a character’s death is mourned by the victim’s father and witnessed by Underhill, could be considered by many to be needless, I personally found that it defined the mourning character, and saw it to be one of the key moments of beauty to be found in THE THROAT; the slow , careful pace of the scene really makes it emotional, and it also lets you see how much Straub cares about his story.
THE THROAT also takes a similar approach to PTSD as KOKO, using it to show that Underhill is scarred by both his war-time experiences and the murder of his sister. From his fear of walking in open spaces to seeing the disappearing form of a girl he perceives to be his sister, Underhill’s mental injures are horrifically deep, and Straub uses this as an effective way to make the character a unique, compelling protagonist.
I was seated in a clean, high-tech restaurant very different from Saigon, the Vietnamese restaurant two floors beneath my loft on Grand Street. (Two friends, Maggie Lah and Michael Poole, live in the loft between my place and the restaurant.) Bare white walls instead of printed palm fronds, pink linen tablecloths with laundry creases. The waiter handed me a long stiff folded white menu printed with the restaurant’s name, L’Imprime. I opened the menu and saw Human Hand listed among Les Viandes. Human hand, I thought, that’ll be interesting, and when the waiter returned, I ordered it.. it came almost immediately, two large, red, neatly severed hands covered with what looked more like the rind of a ham than skin. Nothing else was on the white disc of the plate. I cut a section from the base of the left hand’s thumb and put it in my mouth. It seemed a little undercooked. Then the sickening realisation that I was chewing a piece of a hand struck me, and I gagged and spat it out into my pink napkin. I shoved the plate across the table and hoped that the waiter would not notice that I did not have the stomach for this meal. At that moment I woke up shuddering and jumped out of bed.
If you think that the above quote is a bit gross, then you probably won’t be able to stomach the rest of the novel—which brings us to our next point: the grit. Like its predecessors, THE THROAT presents a world in which those who crave violence and depravity exist among us, though one could argue that this novel’s depictions of these people are the most horrifying examples of such that exist within the Blue Rose Trilogy. For example:
On the top shelf of Dragonette’s refrigerator, the police discovered four other severed heads, two of black males, one of a white male, and one of a white female who appeared to be in her early teens. The second shelf contained an unopened loaf of Branola bread, half a pound of ground chuck in a supermarket wrapper, a squeezable plastic container of French’s mustard, and a six-pack of Pforzheimer beer. On the third shelf down stood two large sealed jugs each containing two severed penises, a human heart on a white china plate, and a human liver wrapped in Clingfilm. In the vegetable crisper on the right side of the refrigerator were a moldering head of iceberg lettuce, an opened bag of carrots, and three withered tomatoes. In the left crisper, police found two human hands, one partially stripped of its flesh.
This is just a snippet of the scene, which is, you could say, just a snippet of the whole novel, and what a twisted scene it is! I think that what makes the snippet above so disgusting is that, alongside these dismembered body-parts, there are everyday groceries; resting below a row of human heads is a loaf of bread. These two epically-contrasting things—the twisted and the ordinary—existing in such close proximity to each other just feels wrong on so many levels. That such a twisted person should involve himself in a normal life, just like most other people, is what lingers in your mind the most, the fact that even the most seemingly ordinary of folks could be hiding a jar of severed penises in their fridge.
I think that what also makes THE THROAT one of the greatest crime/thriller novels ever (and if not, the greatest) is how twisty it is. I consider myself to be fairly smart, not an intellectual like Einstein or some of the other kids in my classes (mainly girls, which isn’t too surprising considering how idiotic teenage boys are nowadays), but smarter—or at least more dedicated—than some of the people who I have the displeasure of having to listen to in, say, Maths or English. I have read four of John Connolly’s Charlie Parker thrillers, and in three of them I managed to predict who the killer would be and/or what their motives were. In the few Sherlock Holmes stories I have read, towards the end of them I kind of thought, Ah, I see where this is going. While in all of the mentioned cases there were multiple twists that crept up on me, I managed to predict a few of the major ones. However, if you go into this novel thinking that you can predict anything, then THE THROAT will shatter this belief into pieces. Straub is an intelligent man who does his research and is dedicated to his works—in fact, isn’t dedication, the will to put effort into something, what makes you smart? I mean, let’s compare insta-hit authors like James Patterson to Straub. Patterson is like a naturally smart person, a human calculator: he may be intelligent, but he isn’t smart. Straub, on the other hand, is, because he is smart enough to know that putting effort into something is worth doing. Now, let’s apply this to writing: while Patterson is a natural bestseller, this doesn’t mean that his novels are good; while Straub takes his time, does his research and writes as carefully as an artist would paint, which means that his novels are good. In my review of GONE SOUTH, I stated that the novel’s author, Robert McCammon, is a prophet of Art; if this is to be believed, then Straub is one, too.
(Goodness, how stuck-up does that paragraph sound?)
THE THROAT blends KOKO’s maddening bedlam of PTSD with MYSTERY’s sense of adventure amidst its own unique form of gritty yet wonderful storytelling. While being very different to its predecessors, this thrilling tome manages to tie both together in an epic conclusion to the Blue Rose Trilogy, which is probably one of the greatest crime sagas to exist. I’m sad to have finished the Trilogy, but I’m excited to see Timothy Underhill again in LOST BOY, LOST GIRL, and eagerly away the day that I crack open another Straub novel to float in the beautiful, glimmering sea that his writing and imagination both place me in.
And so concludes the Blue Rose Trilogy by Peter Straub. -
I am amazed by this final piece to the Blue Rose trilogy, it rounded Koko and Mystery out perfectly.
Tom Passmore and Tim Underhill are both fantastically written characters, reasonable, believable and ultimately endearing throughout.
This is probably the ultimate in higher-brow thriller/mystery that I've ever read.
Peter Straub also had a wonderful way of appealing for sympathy to who ultimately (and I wondered off and on) was the murderer and he got it, from me anyway.
This book was densely-written, smooth, vast and quotable. In the end, part of me was glad it was through, but a bigger part of me wanted another few lengthy volumes.
Hinting toward the supernatural (whether hallucinatory or not) played very well with me and although I recognized early the story would be very grounded there was always a otherworldly place lingering and I loved that touch.
This is a fucking amazing story. -
It is a masterpiece. I got engaged from the first page and eventually read the book in 2 days because I couldn't stop as I wanted to know more and more about the riddles involving different topics like crime, war and madness. The novel could be tagged as a crime novel, but it is also a horror story. It shows us the the dark side of the human being. And there are some paragraphs really disturbing and frightening for example the sentence that talks about ghosts and how they envy us for being alive. It made me feel I was being observed and surrounded by invisible eyes. Also the connection with the Vietnam war turned out to be really interesting and keeps you thinking over where is the relation of it with the crimes of blue rose... Undeniably it's a good reading for all the fans of thrillers, horror or crime novels
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A totally great mystery/thriller, not as supernaturally based as the other Straub novels I've read, but really excellent. Tim Underhill gets a call from an old friend named John Ransom, and learns that John's wife has been brutally attacked and is in a coma. Scrawled above her body were the words "Blue Rose," which connects her to a series of killings that took place thirty years ago -- and were thought solved. Is the Blue Rose killer acting from beyond the grave? Or is it just a copycat?
The phone call launches a complex and satisfying plot, which follows Tim as he tries to solve the mystery before him, while flashing back to Tim's childhood and his stint in Vietnam. Straub draws his characters well, and keeps the plot moving until the very last page. Great stuff.
