Review by Grady Harp
New York author Colin Dodds is an American author of note – and one whose novels continue to reveal that he is likely to become one of our premiere writers. His roots are in Massachusetts but he was educated and lives in New York – Brooklyn to be exact. He is a widely published poet and the author of screenplays and now four novels – ‘Another Broken Wizard’, ‘The Last Bad Job’, ‘What Smiled at Him’ and now ‘Windfall’. His topics are multifaceted, and attempting to label him with a genre is a complex task. And perhaps that is why he is so very fine at creating a new level of communication – dissecting contemporary political foibles, mystery, thrillers, paranormal aspects and autopsies of human behavior as though before a surgical theater of critical and disbelieving minds.
What happens in WINDFALL, while a mesmerizingly fascinating and addictive story, steps beyond the usual campfire cum barbershop tales spread around town or discussed in literary circles. He tackles the environmental crisis that is leaving such an indelible impact on us all, racism as it applies to Native Americans, crime as in guns for hire and cartels, the military and its insidious metastasis into our everyday life, corruption in politics, romance – it is all here. But the kicker that separates this tale of the very real possibility of a second American civil war (reference the derring-do in Congress and the schism that is creating) and the influence of terrorism’s consequences – the real key to understanding the story as Dodds has sculpted it is his uncanny idea of the ‘possession’ of the main character Seth Tatton, a lawyer by training and an assassin by trade, by a creature from beyond our concept of time. In creating this inner person in Seth, the author introduces so many aspects of ‘paranormal’ ideation and lets the concept seep in to our minds so slowly and virally that at first we may reject his ploy (Seth having a creature inside him who surfaces at will) until the presence of this ancient ‘otherness’ simply makes the entire story core credible.
This comment is not meant to be a plot summary: that can be retrieved from the author’s synopsis on the site for the book. For this reader the important aspect of sharing thoughts here is to encourage those whose hunger for the new in writing will be stimulated to become submerged in this very contemporary landfall of a book. Colin Dodds has arrived.
TITLE: WINDFALL
AUTHOR: COLIN DODDS
PUBLISHER: MEDIUM RARE PUBLISHING
ISBN: 978-0972180580
[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”0972180583″]