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The Terror of Living

by Urban Waite (Goodreads Author)

3.44 of 5 stars 3.44 · rating details · 431 ratings · 118 reviews

Phil Hunt is in deep trouble.

Hunt is on the run from two men: Drake, the deputy sheriff who intends to catch him, and Grady, the vicious hitman who means to kill him.

For twenty years Hunt has lived in Washington State, raising horses with his wife on his small farm. He's tried to stay out of trouble, wanting only to make a living and taking the occasional illicit job in o...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published February 7th 2011 by Little, Brown and Company (first published January 1st 2011)

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Community Reviews

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Apr 06, 2011 Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-mystery, modern-lit, bad-guys-rule, 2011

“Welcome, gentlemen. I’m John Keller from the Society of Literary Hit Men. And you are?”

“Grady Fisher from The Terror of Living.”

“Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men.

“Thanks you for coming. We’ve got a position open with SLHM and you two were nominated as likely candidates. However, I’m afraid we only have one spot so only one of you will be invited to join. Mr. Fisher, please tell us why you think you’re qualified for the SLHM.”

“I did hits for a crooked lawyer involved in heroin smuggling...more

18 likes · like · see review

Nov 23, 2011 Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: may-read, mystery-thriller

This story covers ground that's been covered so don't expect great surprises. The writing started off slow and i was bit hesitant from first 80 pages or so in finishing it, but it all picked up momentum halfway and leading to a showdown of sorts. The writing became more gripping and flowed better. Story is written in the similar vein of No Country For Old Me, involving drugs and things going wrong. The story opens a view into a realistic world of drug mules.

4 likes · like · see review

Apr 24, 2013 Shelley Fearn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: manly-fiction, mystery-suspense

I love finding an author whose books I've missed the first time around. While ordering fiction titles for the library I saw that Waite's latest novel Carrion Birds received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. While waiting for the book to arrive, I went back and picked up The Terror of Living.

I can only give it 3 stars but found it good enough to whet my appetite for this author's works. It is a mystery/thriller but without the stereotypical heroes and villains. The protagonist,...more

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Sep 10, 2012 Ian Mapp rated it 2 of 5 stars

All style and little substance. Comes with page after page of gushing praise, about "how there are echos of Cormac McCarthy in this self assured debut".

And there in lies the problem. They are more facsimile than echos. The author does not have his own voice and sets out to repeat No Country for Old Men - moving the location but having a drug deal gone wrong and an over the top killer hell bent on revenge. Throw in a copper with a back story and a vietnamese drug mule and you have the four corner...more

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Feb 15, 2012 James Thane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-fiction

As a young man, Phil Hunt made a terrible mistake that sent him to prison and that has effectively dominated the rest of his life. For twenty years after being released, he has lived in Washington State. He's worked a variety of jobs but was fortunate enough to win the love of the proverbial good woman. Now in their fifties, the couple is eking out an existence on a small horse farm and Hunt supplements their meager income with the occasional job that falls outside the letter of the law.

As is al...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Hallie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Urban Waite's powerful debut novel "The Terror of Living" is a character-driven thriller set in the North Cascades. Two men on opposite sides of the law face off. Horse farmer Phil Hunt is a fundamentally descent man who's gotten up to his neck in drug smuggling. Deputy Bobby Drake is a straight arrow cop, his father a disgraced former sheriff imprisoned for misdeeds--or were they mistakes?

In the dark of night, a parachute ("like a giant jellyfish hanging there in the air" with a blinking red b...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Jenny O. rated it 4 of 5 stars

A drug deal gone bad has been written from here to there to everywhere. And that's what this book ostensibly is about? a huge crate of heroine is dropped from a helicopter somewhere in the mountains of Washington state. Instead of making a smooth delivery, the town sheriff hears the commotion (you'll find out why he's nearby later in the novel) foils the plan and takes one victim into custody. What happens thereafter is that the gates of hell are swung open: the drug dealers have turned against...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Jim Thomsen rated it 4 of 5 stars

A remarkably smooth, self-assured debut, Urban Waite's literary thriller does a masterful job of keeping the action propelling forward while developing interesting characters, patiently plumbing themes of loss and redemption, and giving readers a sublime and deeply seated sense of place. The prose in the Pacific Northwest tale of hot pursuit is wonderfully cool and controlled, giving readers the sense that they can settle back because they are in the hands of a strong storyteller.

I could nitpic...more

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Feb 16, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

A provocative thriller will fasten a reader to the proverbial edge of the seat, either by laying a trail of clues to "whodunit" or leading us on a mad and oscillating cat-and-mouse chase through the landscape of the novel. In the case of Urban Waite's contemporary, reflective and rousing cat-and-mouse debut, I was glued to the pages of perilous pursuit and quickened by the torn and haunted rogue heroes--Deputy Bobby Drake, and ex-convict and owner of a struggling horse farm, Phil Hunt.

There's th...more A provocative thriller will fasten a reader to the proverbial edge of the seat, either by laying a trail of clues to "whodunit" or leading us on a mad and oscillating cat-and-mouse chase through the landscape of the novel. In the case of Urban Waite's contemporary, reflective and rousing cat-and-mouse debut, I was glued to the pages of perilous pursuit and quickened by the torn and haunted rogue heroes--Deputy Bobby Drake, and ex-convict and owner of a struggling horse farm, Phil Hunt.

There's the law (Drake), the lawless (Grady), and then there is that equivocal and tarnished outlaw, Hunt--the name brimming with metaphor--whose reckoning is tethered to Drake's by plaited doubts and dark obstacles reaching back to a coiled and inextricable past. In short, they are each other's nemesis. The wives in this story are resolute and strong, providing a mirror for the reader to reflect on their moody tormented husbands. The northwest territory of Washington State becomes its own penetrating and terrifying, living character.

In the mountain wilderness passes between Washington and Canada, drug smuggling is a lot more challenging than it used to be, now that boundary crossing between Canada and the U.S. requires a passport and the roads are policed. Bricks of cocaine dropped from planes in the blue-black night below the high treetops and picked up by horseback, as well as human "mules" carrying condoms full of heroin implanted by ingestion, are the methods used to foil the law.

In the near-opening pages, newly married Deputy Drake, on his day off, sights Hunt's abandoned horse trailer on the logging roads of Silver Lake and suspects an imminent transaction. He camps out and waits, haunted by memories, by the ghost of family history. Drake's father, a once formidable sheriff, is serving time in prison. He supplemented his earnings as a drug courier, as Hunt is doing now. Hunt's wife, Nora, is not too keen on her husband's extracurricular activities, but their love is a firm and unalloyed bedrock that never diminishes. Hunt's curled past as a convict is something for the reader to discover, a piece of information that is teased out and explored over the course of the novel, magnifying the psychological heft of this better-than-genre story. Hunt's demons correlate Drake's, and propel them and the story.

The plot mobilizes early on when Drake comes face to face with Hunt and Hunt's young rookie in the midst of collecting the goods. Phil is a skilled horseman who escapes, but the "kid" is apprehended and suffers a gruesome fate in jail. The chase proceeds with a measured pace, hypnotic and bracing. The dead bodies pile up, thanks to the main supplier's lackey, Grady, a former chef and sociopathic killer on the trail of Hunt and Drake alike.

Rounding out the cast are DEA agent and straight shooter, Driscoll, working with Drake; "the lawyer" (nameless) and drug deal maker; Hunt's long time friend, Eddie; Bobby Drake's perceptive wife, Sheri; and an array of cold-blooded, one-dimensional thugs. Then there's the female mule, Thu, a Vietnamese women who lives in Seattle. The thugs and mule are necessary to the plot, but the theme is amply filled by the invisible relationship between Drake and Hunt.

I was additionally impressed by the nuanced juxtaposition of Sheri and Nora, and how they counterpoint Drake and Hunt. Phil is used to Nora's capacity to know his essential nature. Drake, a newlywed, still grapples with Sheri's tacit understanding of his confused motives. The counterpoint between the two marriages was lightly but substantively rendered, endowing the book with weighty subtext that accumulates as the story progresses. This was a testosterone-infused novel, and yet, in the final assessment, it is the women who impel their men.

Waite may not have broken the mold in this somber thriller, but he deftly contributed his own achievement. The spiritual struggle between good and bad is a conventional theme that the author probed with a fresh eye. There were a few scene contrivances to advance the plot, but they did not distract from this taut, intense story.

The prose is stark and shadowy, lambent and sensuous, weaving in the geography of the northwest so ably that I heard the wind like a susurrus whisper--and sometimes a howl--through the trees, and I lurched through the snaking roads. There are tendrils of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, but less antediluvian, and Waite, at this juncture, is not as seasoned. But I did relish at some of the turns of event that will inevitably be compared to McCarthy's work, and I suspect that Waite deliberately paid a nodding homage--as evidenced by the character (although minor) identified as "the kid" (viz. Blood Meridian, but with a lower-case "k"). Some readers may decry it as essentially formulaic, but that would be a limited view. What makes this novel stand out is the ethereal prose and the ever-strengthening bond between Hunt and Drake.

The events in this book are graphic, explicit and occasionally disturbing, but with a controlled restraint. There's also a choice twist on the Mexican standoff. For squeamish readers, this is a fair warning that the novel isn't for the faint of heart or for readers who abhor violence in literature. This was executed like a noir-western-opera-suspense-drama-slash-thriller fusion, with a harmonic equipoise of physical action and interior torment. The story is a hybrid brew of nihilism and romanticism, summoning a cauldron of terror and stirring it with an ache and longing for tranquility.
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Feb 11, 2011 ALPHAreader rated it 4 of 5 stars

‘The Terror of Living’ is the debut crime-thriller from Urban Waite.

Deputy Bobby Drake is out hunting around Silver Lake when he sees an abandoned horse trailer and suspects drug trafficking.

Phil Hunt is in the middle of a drug exchange when he is spotted by Deputy Bobby Drake.

Phil escapes, but he has Deputy Drake in hot pursuit. Phil also had madman Grady Fisher on his trail and after his blood.

Hunt tries to out-run the lawman and the madman while the body count rises.

Read reviews of Waite’s...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Patricia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Deputy Bobby Drake has returned to his hometown, Silver Lake, Washington, and is following in the footsteps of his father who was also a lawman. The difference is that Bobby’s father supplemented his income by dealing with illicit deliveries through the mountain passes near his home. Bobby’s father was caught and is serving time in jail.

While on patrol Bobby find an abandoned horse trailer that prompted him to think something suspicious was going on. He decided to go up into the mountains and th...more

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Sep 26, 2010 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars

He sat in the near-dark, one finger running thoughtfully along the deckle edges of the pages, remembering how his dad used to love him an awful lot then less so. Or so it seemed. But you never know. Love worked that way.

In another room in the city, the blond man ate his popcorn but it didn't fill. The hunger creeped up and tapped him on the shoulders, wondering politely when he was going to get his knife bag out.

The drug-runner ran some drugs, his hand on the pommel, guiding the horse along the...more He sat in the near-dark, one finger running thoughtfully along the deckle edges of the pages, remembering how his dad used to love him an awful lot then less so. Or so it seemed. But you never know. Love worked that way.

In another room in the city, the blond man ate his popcorn but it didn't fill. The hunger creeped up and tapped him on the shoulders, wondering politely when he was going to get his knife bag out.

The drug-runner ran some drugs, his hand on the pommel, guiding the horse along the trail. He stopped and dismounted, his fingers on some very specific kind of flowers that they have here, remembering some very specific information about their biology, before sniffing the air cautiously. Like a bear. He was full of regrets. Not hungry at all. He thought of his dad.

The blond man got his knife bag out. He smiled.

It was still near-dark in the room, and the book read fast but flawed. He didn't care. He was just trying to do what he was trying to do. And the world rolled on, the way worlds do. He wished he had some popcorn. Maybe that would satisfy.

The drug-runner's drugs fell out all over the floor. They opened up a hunger in him, but not that other kind that drugs sometimes pretend to satisfy, but a different kind, about money, that drugs also don't fill. Hunger was like that. His dad went away when he was little. That opened up a hunger that the drugs couldn't fill. But neither could the drug money. Still, he was a good man, and he was full. Full of shame.

The blond man smiled all the way, changing trains in the station, the hunger waiting patiently, not tapping his shoulders any more but occasionally looking at its watch, raising an eyebrow, meaningful-like. Then the blond man noticed he'd left the bag in that last train. It was so unlike him. The hunger looked pretty pissed now. Someone was going to pay.

This review is a bit snotty, maybe, or maybe just silly. The book was a bit silly, or maybe just slow. The action stuff moved, and once we get to it there's a clean crisp attention to the mayhem that is admirably achieved. There is also a lot of dad stuff, and Hemingway kept tapping me on the shoulders, at least until Cormac snorted with exasperation behind Hemingway, said he didn't know what the hell Hemingway was on about 'cause it was his stuff being all homaged and shit. The two men stared daggers at each other, literal daggers. The reviewer again slipped into being an asshole, and decided enough was enough. The hunger wasn't filled.(less)

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Feb 02, 2011 Kelly Hager rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book has been compared to No Country For Old Men, and that’s a fair comparison. The plot and writing style are both similar and I say that as a huge, huge compliment, because I loved NCFOM (book and movie). In The Terror of Living, we follow several different narrators as they circle around each other. It’s primarily the story of a drug drop gone bad and (like NCFOM) is an excellent cautionary tale of why getting involved in things like this is a bad idea.

Phil and an accomplice (never named...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

If Miami Vice and Dexter met in a bar, did the dirty and produced a child that didn’t quite get enough oxygen during its birth, it would look a lot like this book.

Main players: Hunt—once killed a guy and has been helping put drugs on our streets for 20 years because a guy with a record finds it hard to get honest work (yeah, right). Drake—cop whose father is in prison for doing exactly what Hunt is doing. Grady—garden variety psycho who likes cutting things up. When a drug drop goes wrong, thank...more If Miami Vice and Dexter met in a bar, did the dirty and produced a child that didn’t quite get enough oxygen during its birth, it would look a lot like this book.

Main players: Hunt—once killed a guy and has been helping put drugs on our streets for 20 years because a guy with a record finds it hard to get honest work (yeah, right). Drake—cop whose father is in prison for doing exactly what Hunt is doing. Grady—garden variety psycho who likes cutting things up. When a drug drop goes wrong, thanks to Drake, Grady is sent after Hunt. What ensues is a bloody chase that results in much mayhem.

According to many, this story is a rip-off of, No Country For Old Men. I haven’t read this but even I can see the plot is anything but original. While Waite writes well, his narrative isn’t what I’d call ‘beautiful’, as described by Stephen King on the front cover, and I won’t be ‘following Urban Waite for years to comes’, as predicted by Michael Koryta. In fact, narratively speaking, Waite tends to be repetitive and overly poetic. Why he felt the need to keep pointing out that the rain was falling ‘from the sky’ I can’t imagine (where the hell else would it fall from?). And this passage would have to be the most spectacular case of repetition I’ve read in years—check out all the ‘her’s:

‘What Drake saw was a small girl lying face up in bed; her skin seemed to be drawing away from her, as if the climate had hurt her, something shrinking up inside her and pulling all of her along. She was pale, her eyes closed, the dark fall of her hair on the pillow seemingly the only living thing about her.’ (p 243)

To be fair—and I really should try to be—the plot moves swiftly and the frequent viewpoint shifts prevent boredom setting in. Unfortunately, though, I found it impossible to care about any of these characters, either because of the shifting viewpoint, or perhaps because, with the exception of Drake, every one of them is a criminal. Which leads me to Waite’s incessant need to keep hitting the reader over the head with a theme that is really too simplistic: ‘Good people sometimes do bad things.’ Sure they do and this makes them BAD people. Honestly, it’s a stretch to generate much sympathy for characters who are not only killing thousands by their actions, but who have willingly chosen their path—regardless of their excuses.

How the publisher managed to get so many high-profile authors’ glowing recommendations onto the cover of, The Terror of Living, I’ll never know, but it goes to show how a mediocre story can be a best seller if the right people are behind it. King’s recommendation was the only reason I bought this book. I won’t be so quick to believe the hype next time.
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Aug 23, 2011 Gareth Price rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's not that often you see a book blurb by the brilliant Daniel Woodrell so when you do it's a good bet that the book is worth a look. The Terror of Living does have a blurb by Mr Woodrell along with blurbs by the great Tom Franklin, Michael Koryta and a certain Stephen King. With thumbs up from this great line-up the book certainly had a lot to live up to.

Glad to say that it delivered on all counts. Starting as a drug drop that goes wrong and continuing with the subsequent chase down it had me...more

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Mar 16, 2011 Drew rated it 4 of 5 stars

It was great. If you're interested in reading it don't read any further because I'll have some light spoilers about the ending and what I thought of the book as a whole.

It's basically No Country For Old Men. That's not a bad thing in my eyes, but you almost have to view it as an homage without thinking that it's a ripoff. There was one time in particular that the dialogue was exactly the same as well. It's not exactly the same by any means, but if you've seen or read No Country this book will se...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2011

I can't decide how to rate this. I might have to copy Mag and give it a 3.75 and round up to 4.

The law and the outlaw pit themselves against one another. I wanted to add ‘as always’ but it’s not true in this case and I suppose sometimes it’s not true in life either. Drake is the Seattle law man, Hunt is the appropriately named hunted drug runner. Drake takes his work seriously attempting to make up for his dad’s crimes. His dad was also a Sheriff but he combined that with drug smuggling and woun...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 1 of 5 stars

I didn't make it past page 28. There were too many logical flaws and then the Deputy shot the horse. The deputy is suspicious because a car is abandoned on a remote road leading up into the mountains. He sees the car several days in a row and on his day off leaves his new bride without any kind of good explanation to go camping on his own in the mountains to see if he can find the car's driver. Apparently the bride is not upset by this. And despite the fact that he's on foot and the bad guys are...more

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Feb 15, 2011 Heavensent1 rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Terror Of Living is a fast-paced crime suspense thriller that has mild to moderate expletives with many graphic bloody scene descriptions. First time author, Urban Waite, delivers an on-your-seat thriller with strong characters and a believable plot. Phil Hunt is a down-on-his luck horse rancher who is looking for one big break to put his life back in order. Bobby Drake is the deputy sheriff who struggles with his past while embracing his future. Grady, "The Chef", is the socio-psychopath be...more

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Feb 15, 2011 Elizabeth A. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Deputy Sheriff Bobby Drake is a man with a tremendous chip on his shoulder. Once a promising college football player, his life was turned upside down when his father, Sheriff at the time, was busted for running drugs across the US/Canada border. Drake returned home to his small hometown in Washington State and took a job as a deputy sheriff, determined to restore honor to his name and prove he’s a better man than his father.

Phil Hunt is also a man struggling hard to make amends in his life. A 10...more Deputy Sheriff Bobby Drake is a man with a tremendous chip on his shoulder. Once a promising college football player, his life was turned upside down when his father, Sheriff at the time, was busted for running drugs across the US/Canada border. Drake returned home to his small hometown in Washington State and took a job as a deputy sheriff, determined to restore honor to his name and prove he’s a better man than his father.

Phil Hunt is also a man struggling hard to make amends in his life. A 10 year prison stint for manslaughter has rendered him all but unemployable, and along with his wife Hunt now ekes out a meager living by running a horse farm. The money not being quite enough, Hunt supplements the family income by picking up shipments of drugs dropped deep in the forest just inside the border and delivering them to a distributor. It’s a process that’s worked smoothly for Hunt for nearly two decades. He even had a tacit understanding with Drake’s father…but Drake isn’t his father.

When Drake notices a truck and horse trailer parked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere his radar goes on high alert. After the truck doesn’t move overnight, Drake packs up his gear and heads into the forest to find out just what’s going on. What he finds is Hunt and a partner collecting a drug shipment and, a few shots later, Hunt’s low key courier job has gone seriously sideways.

Now Hunt’s on the run from Drake, who wants to arrest him, and his drug connection, who want the shipment Hunt no longer has. As if that wasn’t enough to make Hunt’s life difficult, the dealers send a hitman, a particularly nasty piece of work named Grady, into the fray to tie up all loose ends. What follows is an overlapping game of cat-and-mouse amongst the players that unfolds at a suffocatingly relentless pace.

And yet, for all the action present in The Terror of Living – and there’s quite a bit, some of it extremely graphic – it is the wonderfully developed characters that ultimately drive the story. Hunt and Drake are both haunted by events from the past, but striving to move forward with some semblance of a normal life. Both men also draw strength and purpose from their wives, each of whom acts as the moral compass that keeps their husband from going completely off the rails.

That The Terror of Living is author Urban Waite’s first novel is quite an accomplishment, especially considering it is deservedly drawing comparisons to No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy; not too bad for your first rodeo. With a tour de force debut like this, it’s scary to think what Waite will serve up next. I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting. (less)

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Mar 20, 2011 Casey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Urban Waite's debut novel, The Terror of Living, is a frenetically paced literary crime thriller. Told in short sections, the longest no longer than eight or ten pages, and from the perspective of five characters (all in the third person), the structure and pace of the novel take some getting used to at first. It has the effect of jump cuts in a movie or TV show, but once the main characters are established forty or fifty pages in, the structure and style work really well for the story being tol...more Urban Waite's debut novel, The Terror of Living, is a frenetically paced literary crime thriller. Told in short sections, the longest no longer than eight or ten pages, and from the perspective of five characters (all in the third person), the structure and pace of the novel take some getting used to at first. It has the effect of jump cuts in a movie or TV show, but once the main characters are established forty or fifty pages in, the structure and style work really well for the story being told.

Speaking of the story, it follows Phil Hunt, a low-level drug runner in Washington State, who is happened upon in a desolate section of the forest north of Seattle by small-time deputy Bobby Drake. Hunt gets away, but loses the drugs, and in doing so brings the wrath of Grady Fisher, a vicious hit man hired to track down Hunt by the people smuggling the drugs. This brief synopsis probably makes the novel sound a little over-the-top, but Waite does a really nice job--with a couple of exceptions--of keeping the genre elements reigned in.

In the acknowledgements, Waite thanks, among many other people, several writers and their books, including Cormac McCarthy for No Country for Old Men. Herein lies my biggest, and really only major problem with the novel. Even if I hadn't read the acknowledgements, the similarities to No Country for Old Men are hard to ignore. It's understandable, and admirable, for a writer to express his or her indebtedness to another writer's work, but I think that it's possible to become too indebted to a particular writer. Given the power of McCarthy's novel it's probably easy for a writer to lean on it, whether consciously or not, especially when writing something similar in theme. I think this manifests itself most clearly in the structure and theme of the novel and in the character of Grady, the hit man. He is very reminiscent of Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. Like Chigurh, Grady is a sadistic psychopath, but all along he is completely aware of who and what he is, and unfortunately it doesn't come off, or at least it didn't for me. Also, his weapon of choice is his bag of knives, which just didn't quite play for me either. Where Chigurh is mysterious, Waite gives some background on Grady, developing him much more than McCarthy does Chigurh; however, in a strange way, McCarthy's Chigurh is a better character for all that is unknown about him than Waite's Grady, though he is more "rounded." It's almost as if in "rounding" him out, trying to in some way explain his behavior, the essence of his character gets lost. What remains is a character who's a bit too cartoonish, especially given that the rest of the novel works so well. Finally, there is a section where Grady and Hunt talk on the phone that is too long to quote or summarize here (pgs. 210-213), but if you've read No Country for Old Men (or seen the movie) then the scene will be very familiar. It's a great scene, don't get me wrong, but it didn't feel completely original.

Even with it's similarities to No Country, I enjoy The Terror of Living. After all, if you are going to use a writer's work as a model, then you could choose far worse than McCarthy. I read somewhere that Waite sold another novel along with this one, so we're likely to see his second novel in the not too distant future. Based on what he was able to do with The Terror of Living, I look forward to whatever Waite does next.

For more, see my blog: http://thestoryisthecure.blogspot.com/(less)

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Jan 20, 2013 Renee Pawlish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Unlike many of the reviewers, I didn't read No Country For Old Men (I did see the movie). If you want to compare to that, it's like it, but the NCFOM is like so many others. There are only so many plots, and it's the telling that makes it different. Having said that, I liked The Terror of Living. I did think it started out slow, and there were a couple of things I didn't buy (what happens to the kid in the jail cell and no one says or does anything), but the story picked up as I read on. It mayb...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Beverly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Why did I read this book?
• It is a debut book that was receiving good reviews and I enjoy good debut books
• It was a library book
• The author’s name caught by attention
• Suspense it not my usual read, and wanted to read something outside of my preferred genres

Thoughts on book:
• This is a “chase” storyline and since I do not normally read “chase” storylines I do not know if how this story unfolded has been done before but thought that the strength in this book was the way the story was laid out...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Juuso rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read the finnish edition "Pelon Rajalla" of this novel and I'm afraid the translation was not very good. In fact, it was horrible. Now, I admit I haven't read the original, so I can't really compare and be 100%, but I trust my instincts on this. I felt right from the beginning that it was a poorly translated. And couple of typos here and there didn't actually help. Or maybe Waite's style just doesn't work in finnish so well. Anyway, I have to write a review of the novel to certain publication...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Larry Rogers rated it 5 of 5 stars

Urban Waite's Pacific noir novel is a first-time effort that should lead to a major career that could easily rank with the likes of Chuck Hogan (or Chuch Logan, for that matter), Wallace Stroby, Thomas Perry, or James Hall. The quality of writing is very high (one torture scene involving a criminal gopher sticks in the memory because of imagery, not its sheer punishing physical detail) and the plot is tautly constructed. It features one of the scarier sociopaths in crime novel history, but its c...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars

What an excellent first novel by author Urban Waite. I always wondered why more authors did not utilize the smuggling that goes on in the remote stretches of the US Canadian border particularly in the mountainous region between British Columbia and Washington state as the background for their writings. I am very familiar with the area he writes about so that made the story even that more enjoyable for me. The book was hard to put down as the action was never ending. Mr. Waite developed the chara...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a 'chase' book. Drug smugglers in the Pacific Northwest get caught retrieving a heroin drop and the rest of the book is about the law and the bad guys hunting them down. Simple premise but chock full of suspense and a creepy assassin who likes to cut people up with his special collection of knives. There really aren't any redeeming qualities about any of these characters but yet you are compelled to root for all of them except the creepy knife freak. The writing is atmospheric, there are...more

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Mar 02, 2011 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is really a 2 1/2 star book. Reading something like this, an obvious rip-off of No Country For Old Men, makes you realize that there's no one better than Cormac McCarthy at this sort of thing. Waite's characters do have some soul, and that's a good thing, but his Grady is no match for Anton Chigur. While some of his writing is quite shiny, the bare metal shows through the paint in a number of places. You don't need to be told that Waite is only thirty and this is his first novel. Still, it...more

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Feb 14, 2011 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book has so many things about it that I like. It's a fast-paced thriller/cop novel set in the Seattle area. The characters are well-drawn and have some depth to them. The villain is so ferocious but oddly believeable as a complete sociopath. As the book churns along it continues to pick up pace and ends at a breathtaking pace. I've been reading some good crime novels lately (Sjowall and Wahloo, Don Winslow, others I can't remember at this late hour), and this one stands alongside them all i...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime

Based on several factors (local author, my age, Woodrell blurb, comparisons to No Country For Old Men) I expected this to be great. It wasn't. It was good enough to finish reading, sure, but it lacked something. I think it comes down to the fact that the writing just wasn't that good. Maybe it was all the commas. Yes, too many commas where there should not have been commas. It's weird that that bugged me. Also, I felt like I was reading the same sentence over and over again, "...how had his life...more

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About Urban Waite

Urban Waite is the author of The Terror of Living, named one of Esquire's Ten Best Books of the year. His latest book is The Carrion Birds, an Indie Next Pick and the recipient of starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. His short fiction has appeared in the Best of the West anthology, the Southern Review, and other journals. He has degrees from the University of Washington, Western Wa...more

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