Please note that this analysis contains spoilers.

Crimson Letters
From Kandahar Province

Ian DG Sandusky
Wild Wolf Publishing 2011
ISBN: 978-1-907954-09-2
Trade Paperback
202 pages
Suspense/Horror

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After a roadside bomb tears Private Quincent L Meyer’s life apart in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, he’s left horrifically mutilated. Back home, job opportunities pass him by and children cry at the very sight of him. All alone, the world fades to grey.

Continued searching for work and insanely brutal workouts fill those grey days, and evening drinking at The Stallion takes care of the rest. But every night Quince is plagued by nightmares, forced to relive the fatal patrol again and again. As the shrapnel rips through him, he wakes to a life he barely knows anymore.

Then, just as there’s a ray of light—a budding romance with the beautiful Sarah, a drunken decision leads to a stupid, reflexive moment that leaves a woman dead and his life ruined. Knowing that if he stays the cops will catch him, Quince decides to re-enlist.

This is when Quince truly begins a descent into a hell of his own making. And we, the readers, watch in horror as our hero makes one inhuman decision after another, reveals one bit of insanity after another… The terrible secret he brought back from Kandahar; The gruesome, torturous death he brings to someone who betrays him; The red phone on his living room wall that can’t dial out but that someone who knows the horrors he has perpetrated can use to call him. The place he goes to in the end; a sort of purgatory, where all will be explained.

And as the book comes to an end, Quince is offered one more choice. When he makes it, all is revealed and we see the Crimson Letters From Kandahar Province for what they really are.

How do you make readers care about a narcissistic murderer, an ex-soldier who’s answer to everything seems extreme and often violent? You sneak up on the readers, of course, hoping they have enough invested in Quince Meyer to keep them reading an increasingly bizarre story—a tale that finally pushes through to a place where the author carefully reels his readers back in so they can sort things out in their minds, readying his audience for when they reach the brief double dénouement, where there’s a moment when Quince suddenly understands what has been going on and another moment where they’re expected to go “Ah… I get it, these are the Crimson Letters From Kandahar Province.”

I think Ian Sandusky took a chance with this book. He counts on the readers to be intrigued when our good guy turns out to be a bad guy. Then he keeps them in suspense as to how this is all going to play out, while he takes them through one horror after the next, with some of the readers, I’m sure, wondering how the hell any of this ties into the title. Where and what are the Crimson Letters from Kandahar Province?

Well, Mr. Sandusky, your gamble paid off with me. You caught me by surprise. Maybe I was just having a bad day, but I prefer to think your story concept, while not exactly new, was dressed up in it’s own unique brand of clothes—the sharp suit capturing my attention while you performed sleights of hand I should have caught. Yes, I looked back and found enough evidence there was something so “hinky”about the story, I should have been on high alert. But even then, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to put the whole story together.

And that last bit is where you lose points. Going forward, Mr. Sandusky, you should remember all puzzles need to be solvable. This fundamental law will keep your readers hanging on and ensure that the suspense keeps building. You see, the readers trust you to play fair, Mr. Sandusky, to give them a chance to win your little game. If that chance doesn’t exist, then you have cheated them.

So, what do I do? Crimson Letters from Kandahar Province is a unique and, in a creepy way, interesting story. A few too many typos, missing words and wrong words used, but not enough to affect the tale. If your reader is a passive one, they will have a rewarding experience when everything is laid out for them in the end (if they can make the leap from literal letters to metaphorical ones). But the active reader, the one who works hard to solve the mystery posed by the letters: I question as to whether there are enough clues for them to figure out what’s going on. Myself, I went with the paranormal, which is certainly left open as a possibility. I suppose someone could make the leap to metaphorical letters and a possible dream sequence. But the actual truth? I suspect not. And that means what could easily have been a solid 4 star book drops down to a 3.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye