Thomas H. Cook

• Born: September 19, 1947
• Place of Birth: Fort Payne, Alabama

TYPES OF PLOT: Thriller; police procedural; psychological

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Frank Clemons, 1988-

Contribution

Thomas H. Cook has elevated the police procedural from a marginalized subgenre of detective fiction to a more popularly acceptable genre of popular literature—the psychological novel. The archetypal Cook hero is an isolated loner with just enough human feelings left to respond to the needs of other individuals. The hero is almost destroyed by his empathy, yet he finds eventual redemption in his sacrifices. Cook pays great attention to detail, especially in his depiction of the process of suppressed memory recollection. This careful use of the psychological method shows Cook’s desire to transcend the boundaries of thriller and true-crime writing. Cook has written only a few novels in the Frank Clemens series, preferring nonseries novels so that he may experiment with and examine a variety of narrators and their individual voices and traumatic life experiences. He has also delved into other genres. He wrote the novelization of the science-fiction television series Taken (2002) and mainstream fiction such as Elena (1986) and Moon over Manhattan (2004), a comic novel he wrote with television interviewer Larry King. Cook’s abilities as a writer have been rewarded with growing respect from the mystery reading public and have led to his being presented with the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for best novel for The Chatham School Affair (1996).

Into the Web (2004) and Sandrine's Case (2013) were nominated for several awards, and Red Leaves (2005) won the 2006 Barry Award for Best Novel. In the 2010s, Cook continued writing and published several novels, including Fatherhood and Other Stories (2013), A Dancer in the Dust (2015), and Even Darkness Sings (2018).

Biography

Thomas H. Cook was born on September 19, 1947, in Fort Payne, Alabama, the son of Virgil Richard Cook and Myrick Harper Cook. He started writing at an early age and claims that his first novel was based on his experiences with Heiman Zeidman, a Jewish immigrant from Poland who was one of only a handful of Jewish residents in Cook’s small, southern town. Zeidman, a close family friend, treated the young Cook as a grandson, taking him to films and even on his first trip to New York City. Cook received degrees in English and philosophy from Georgia State College in 1969 and graduated with degrees in American history from Hunter College, City University of New York (1972), and Columbia University (1976). He married Susan Terner, who wrote for radio, on March 17, 1978, and has one child, Justine Ariel.

As a student, Cook worked in jobs ranging from advertising executive for U.S. Industrial Chemicals to secretary for the Association for Help of Retarded Adults. He also taught English and history at DeKalb Community College in Clarkson, Georgia, for three years before becoming a full-time writer. From 1978 to 1982, Cook served as contributing editor, book reviewer, and editor of Atlanta magazine, where his critical abilities, writing, and first short stories earned praise. He also wrote several feature articles on midcentury America, notably the deterioration of the pop-culture movement; essays on modern southern fiction; and articles about the changes in Atlanta neighborhoods and the gentrification of some of the old neighborhoods, especially the Grant Park area, which would figure as the site of a murder in one of his novels. In addition to his mystery and detective novels, he has written several books on true crime. He has contributed reviews and short fiction to various popular publications, including The New York Times Review of Books.

Analysis

Although Thomas H. Cook has produced several books in the Frank Clemons series, most of his novels are psychological mysteries without recurring characters. The investigators in these psychological novels are isolated, tortured individuals haunted by their bad luck and their personal tragedies. Nevertheless, they find themselves compelled to help solve some grisly murders in modern crime fiction. Cook’s protagonists typically find themselves prisoners of their own pasts. His victims are often young and rich, but the wealth that makes their lives easy cannot shield them from bloody fates. Elements of faith and sacrifice are hallmarks of his fiction, as are his realistic portrayals of violent death. He is drawn to crimes known for their ability to shock—not only in fiction but in his true-crime books, such as A Father’s Story (1994), ghostwritten for Lionel Dahmer, father of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Blood Innocents

Blood Innocents (1980) begins in the Central Park Children’s Zoo, a place of frolic, fun, and innocence. This morning, however, a horrendous scene meets the eyes of bystanders. Two of the deer donated to the zoo by a wealthy entrepreneur have been stabbed to death—one deer has been stabbed fifty-seven times, and the other killed with a single slash. As if this were not horrible enough, the scene has been repeated in Greenwich Village, where two women are found dead—one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other with a single slash across her neck. New Yorkers fear that a crazed killer is loose.

Meanwhile, John Reardon, a New York City police officer born into a family of officers, has nothing left but his job. His wife is dead after a prolonged illness, and he is alienated from his adult son. His bosses see his skill and dedication and assign him to work exclusively on the deer slaying. When the women are discovered murdered in Greenwich Village, Reardon is assigned to that case as well. Although he doubts the guilt of the initial suspect, Reardon finds himself under pressure to arrest someone and bring the case to trial. Big-city politicians decide that the cases are not connected, enraging Reardon and encouraging him to initiate his private investigation. He is personally dedicated to finding the truth, though the pressure to drop his inquiry becomes intense. Like many of Cook’s heroes, Reardon has only his stubbornness and devotion to his duty to drive him to the inevitable conclusion. Like the victims, Reardon experiences his own destruction, but in his case, it leads to his redemption and acceptance of the consequences of his former life.

Sacrificial Ground

In Sacrificial Ground (1988), the first volume of the Frank Clemons series, Cook’s protagonist is a homicide detective in Atlanta whose beautiful teenage daughter has committed suicide and whose wife left him soon after their daughter’s death. Clemons, who is slipping into alcoholism, is called to work on a particularly puzzling murder case. The dead teenager, Angelique Devereaux, found at her autopsy to be pregnant, has apparently been living a double life. She was fabulously wealthy—living in a mansion with her sister Karen, an artist—and at the same time “slumming” in the Grant Park area art galleries and carrying on with an unknown lover. Her school friends know little about her and nothing about her activities, and Clemons begins to compare her murder to the death of his own daughter. If this rich, privileged teenager had secrets, he wonders if there might have been secrets that his own daughter had kept from him. Clemons follows Angelique’s trail through her last few days of life, finally arriving at a staggering truth. Like all of Cook’s novels, the ending comes quickly and is surprisingly intense. The reader cannot help but sympathize with Clemons and his own private devils as he unravels the details of the case.

Flesh and Blood

Cook’s second Frank Clemons novel, Flesh and Blood (1989), finds the former Atlanta homicide detective living in the grittier north—New York City. Now a private investigator, Clemons lives a comfortable life on the Upper East Side. Still, he finds himself falling out of love with his girlfriend, the older sister of the murdered teenager in Sacrificial Blood. As a private eye, he finds himself less inclined to work for the wealthier people of the city and more drawn toward the needs of Manhattan’s poor. That is one reason why he accepts the case of Hannah Karlsberg, even though it offers little financial reward. Hannah, an older woman, has been brutally murdered in her apartment. Clemons is hired by her employer, a fashion designer, to locate Hannah’s next of kin so that her body can be released and buried.

Clemons finds, however, that Hannah’s life and her past present some mysteries reminiscent of the secrets surrounding Angelique’s life in Sacrificial Blood. Where had Hannah come from? Who had she encountered? What had she done or had done to her? There are too many questions and too few answers. Clemons begins his investigation with the fashion industry in search of the truth. From the sweatshops of the Lower East Side, where Hannah in her youth was a striker representing the infant American Garment Workers’ Union and protesting the inhuman conditions borne by many young women working in the factories, to a small village in Colombia, and finally, back to Brooklyn, Clemons’s investigation uncovers cruelty and inhumanity that arouse in him a sense of isolation and feelings of betrayal. Cook’s knowledge of history and the beginnings of the labor movement in the United States allowed him to create a story that led to a gripping climax.

Night Secrets

In Night Secrets (1990), the third book in the series, Frank Clemons still lives in Manhattan and still fights the personal demons that drove him to leave the South. To make a living and to keep himself busy, he has taken on two cases. In the first, he is following a philandering rich wife when she visits men other than her husband. In the second, he is trying to find clues in the murder of an old Gypsy woman. He finds out what he can about Gypsies from his friend Farouk, whose mother was a Gypsy. Although someone has confessed to the murder—a young woman of dubious sanity—Clemons finds himself in a quandary. The young lady who has confessed belongs to an obscure Gypsy cult that carries out rituals based on a child supposedly born to Christ and Mary Magdalene and has questionable reasons for her confession based on her sense of guilt. Clemons is sure the young woman is innocent and tries to clear her but finds her to be obstinate in her desire to be a martyr. Cook’s descriptions of New York’s big-city atmosphere, alive twenty-four hours a day, complete with homeless people and all-night diners, make Clemon’s profound loneliness real to the reader as he solves both cases.

Instruments of Night

With Instruments of Night (1998), Cook departs from detective fiction to introduce a different kind of narrator—someone more creative than deductive and sharing Cook’s own choice of career. Paul Graves is a mystery writer who draws on his own tragic past to write his fiction. Graves has been summoned to Riverwood, an artists’ community in the Hudson River Valley, to create fiction out of fact. He is asked to write a story that will answer the many questions about the murder of Faye Harrison, the teenage daughter who lived on the estate more than fifty years ago. Graves is unsure he can solve the mystery—he is a fiction writer by trade, not a detective. However, Faye’s mother, now elderly and near death, wants some sort of closure to the tragedy of her daughter’s fate.

Evidence of Blood

In Evidence of Blood (1991), Jackson Kinley, like Paul Graves, is a crime-fiction writer. Coming home after several years, Kinley finds a true crime mystery in his hometown, Sequoyah, Georgia. The death of Kinley’s friend, Sheriff Ray Tindall, leaves many loose ends for the family and friends of the sheriff. What was he investigating when he died? Why had he reopened the case of convicted murderer Charles Overton—and then just as abruptly closed it? As Kinley delves into the facts regarding the murder of teenager Ellie Dinker more than forty years ago, he is faced with even more questions. Why was Ellie’s body never found, and what was the truth about the only piece of evidence, the bloody dress? His search for answers leads to a web of corruption and lies, and finally, into a deadly secret hidden for over forty years.

Principal Series Character:

• Frank Clemons is an Atlanta homicide detective whose wife left him shortly after the suicide of their teenage daughter. Clemons is the son of a minister, and his alcoholism threatens to destroy what remains of his life. In the course of the series, he moves to New York City, primarily out of a sense of loyalty to his girlfriend, the sister of the first victim whose murder he solves. His girlfriend eventually ends up leaving him, and Clemons offers his services as a private investigator to occupy his mind, working out of a basement office on Forty-ninth Street. Described as a tall, slender man, Clemons finds that his troubles have aged him, giving him the stooped shoulders of a much older man.

Bibliography

Cook, Thomas H. The Thomas H. Cook Omnibus : Red Leaves; the Murmur of Stones. Quercus, 2009.

Dahlin, Robert. “Thomas H. Cook: Stretching the Mystery Envelope.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 245, no. 42, Oct. 1998, p. 43.

Donnelly, Barry. “Cook’s Tour.” The Armchair Detective, vol. 30, no. 3, 1997, pp. 294-98.

Graham, Keith. “Ex-Atlantan Delves into True-Crime Fiction.” The Atlanta Journal/The Atlanta Constitution, 23 Dec. 1990, p. N2.

Lee, Michael. “The South Rises Again and Again.” The Barnstable Patriot, Oct. 2003.

Shankman, Sarah. Introduction to A Confederacy of Crime. Signet, 2001.

"Thomas H. Cook." Penguin Random House, www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/5614/thomas-h-cook. Accessed 20 July 2024.