Harvard educated historian Lucas Page has come to St. Louis to promote his latest book in front of a small group of "museum regulars," none of whom, as it turns out, have any interest in actually taking a copy of the book home with them. Just when he's ready to call it a night, Lucas is approached at his table by what he at first assumes is a homeless woman. But then he realizes that he is looking into the eyes of Lola Faye Gilroy, the very woman he still blames for his father's murder two decades earlier.

"She'd come to make her case before me, clarify the issue Woody Gilroy had raised in his suicide note, rid herself of the guilt he'd laid at her feet, revisit all that in a talk with me, then enter her plea at the end of it: not guilty."

Or had she?

Feeling a little as if he'd been tricked into it, Lucas finds himself agreeing to have a drink with Lola Faye so that they can have a talk about their lives in the aftermath of what happened all those years ago. Lucas, under the impression that Lola Faye is still the uneducated and naive small-town Alabama girl she was when his father hired her to clerk in the family variety store, figures that their conversation will be a short one. Just a quick drink, a little polite conversation, and Lola Faye will be out of his life again - exactly where she belongs.

But then Lola Faye starts asking questions, good ones. And those questions cause Lucas to rethink everything he was so certain that he knew about the night his father was shot to death in his own kitchen by someone lurking outside in the dark. Long before Lucas realizes it, Lola Faye has taken over the conversation and she's guiding it exactly where she wants it to end up.

"The last best hope of life is that at some point during living it, all that you did wrong will suddenly teach you to do right."

The Last Talk with Lola Faye is an intense novel, one in which the pressure is turned up so gradually that the reader ends up being lulled into the same false sense of complacency that Lucas experiences. As it became clearer and clearer that Lucas is correct in feeling threatened by where Lola Faye is leading the conversation, I couldn't turn pages fast enough. Even so, the book's ending is a completely satisfying one that I never saw coming. And that's a good thing.

This is my first experience with a Thomas H. Cook novel, and that strikes me as remarkable considering how much crime fiction I've read over the last several decades and that Cook has written something like three dozen novels. But that's kind of nice, really, because now I have Cook's huge back catalog to explore, including Red Leaves, the one I started a couple of days ago. ( )

Reading this novel was very much like watching an Indie film. The entire novel takes place in a hotel bar where Lucas (a self-proclaimed boring history book writer) and Lola Faye (his father's former mistress) meet and discuss old times.

As you can imagine, they're not reminiscing about "the good old days". As the conversation unfolds, there are quite a few flash backs where Luke remembers his childhood, his parents, and his burning desire to go to Harvard and become a famous writer. Luke also has some secrets that he's never told anyone and Lola Faye seems like she might be able to guess them.

I was intrigued enough to keep reading. Just why is Lola Faye acting like this and saying these things? What are Luke's secrets? What really happened to cause his father's murder?

I didn't feel Lola Faye's conversation seemed true to life, though. Most of the novel involved Lola Faye saying something sincerely, then saying something with a hard edge, then saying something light and fluffy, then back to another penetrating glance and harder edge. We went back and forth with Lola Faye's strange moods and strange sayings for the entire book.

And the ending? The final epilogue chapter? A bit confusing to me. ( )

This book really surprised me. I started reading and became sure that I knew where the story was going and what was going to happen. It felt clunky and predictable. Well, I was very mistaken! This book alternates chapters between and conversation one night and flashbacks. They mesh very well. The story changes directions and goes down a very different road. It felt like an intensely dramatic play or a movie that should be cast with actors who can handle dialogue that changes tone constantly. It often felt like one of the detective shows where the cop acts like he doesn't really know what's going on but he does, and the criminal knows he should be careful with his words but can't stop talking - it reminded me of Vincent D'Onofrio"s character from Criminal Minds...
There is a mystery involved, but the real meat of the novel is the conversation, we watch as it takes twist and turns, and when we think we know what will happen next - it usually doesn't. Fun, tense read! ( )

This was a fascinating look at people's actions, motivations, and how differently people see the same event. This book was recommended by my cousin's wife. Thanks Janet!

Luke, a middle-aged historian, is in St. Louis to plug his latest book. Lola Faye, the woman who worked at his father's variety store in the small town they both grew up in, shows up and wants to speak with him. They adjourn to the hotel bar and slowly start circling around the events leading up to the murder of Luke's father when he (Luke) was an adolescent. I'm not sure how Cook does it, but he manages to get the reader inside the head of both Luke & Lola Faye and we gradually begin to understand that the facts each knows about what happened may not be as close to the truth as they think. ( )

I like this ending. Very heartfull. ( )