Blake Crouch's First Novel "Desert Places" and Its Eerie Similarities to "Darkly Dreaming Dexter," Published the Same Year

            I am a serious fan of Blake Crouch and have read his newer releases, Dark Matter and Recursion, both of which are sci-fi thrillers. I wanted to understand what his first novel may have looked like. Selfishly I myself as a writer, want to know what a successful current author’s first published works looked like. Even though this was self-published, I was still very curious to see what Crouch’s writing looked like ten years before he got big. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this novel is a horror thriller.

            The premise of this novel lies in our main character’s relationship to his brother. Andy is a successful author living in North Carolina. Andy receives a note detailing a body buried on his property. Buried with enough evidence to get him locked away for the crime: his missing paring knife from his kitchen, vials of his blood dumped all over the victim, and of course, the location of the body on his lakeside property. Andy must follow the instructions on the note to ensure that he is not turned into the police. He takes a plane ride and is held by a mystery man that he soon learns is his brother who disappeared thirteen years ago.

HUGE SPOILERS BELOW!!!

            Andy’s brother is a serial killer, and he teaches Andy how to unlock the killer inside of himself by forcing him to participate. In the end, Andy’s brother is killed as he is trying to murder Andy. The next book in this series says that Andy, after being framed and wanted by the FBI for his brother’s crimes, flees and hides out in a cabin tucked away in the remote wilderness of the Yukon. Now, to me, this sounds exactly like the plot of the very popular television show, Dexter conceptually. The television show is also a set of novels, the first one of which directly corresponds to the first season of the show. After the events of the first book, the show follows a completely different path. The show debuted in 2006, and Desert Places was published in 2004. You would think this was a coincidence, but it’s even weirder considering that the first Dexter novel, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, was published in 2004. This is the weirdest coincidence and it’s such a creepy one, considering our subject matter. It is crazy to think that Jeff Lindsay, the author of the Dexter novels, was writing a very similar story to Blake Crouch at the same time. Both published the novels in the same year.

            I very honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Crouch is a prophet of some kind considering the themes in his other works: the manipulation of time and what constitutes linearity, doppelgangers, and the repetition of the same event over and over. It sort of really freaks me out when I think about it!

            However, this novel was so great. There were so many disturbing scenes with such vivid imagery that really stick with the reader for a long time. One in particular is when Andy’s brother pulls his car over to the side of the road, with Andy as his passenger, and props open the hood to feign car trouble. A truck filled with three drunk men stop and attempt to rob them. Andy’s brother plays dumb and acts scared but begs the men to look at his engine and fix it. As the first man leans into the hood, Andy’s brother drops the hood over his head, severing it from his body. Andy later learns that his brother had attached a sharp saw blade underneath the hood, to more easily pull his trick off. The creative ways in which the brother murders makes the novel so worthwhile. It gets boring to read about serial killers if you’re desensitized to it. However horrible that sounds, the murders have to be new and interesting to keep the reader involved.

            There are many great one liners of philosophical musings as well, such as when Andy says “They looked at me as I walked by, their eyes pleading for mercy that wasn’t mine to give” (73). Towards the end of the novel, another murderer character says, “We all want blood. We are war. That’s the code. War and regression and more and more blood. Tell me it doesn’t speak to you” (220). There are so many contemplations on human nature and violence that hit home in this novel. Crouch’s first novel did not disappoint me at all. I've never given Crouch's novels anything less than five stars.