A thriller needs to thrill, and a big part of thrill is the anticipation of some resolution to delicately crafted plotlines that ends in a way that is not merely satisfying, but cathartic. The man has what all good thriller writers absolutely need: an ability to keep the reader turning the page, no matter if common sense, schedules, or needs for survival say otherwise. That works well in The Road, but it isn’t the easiest to read.Ĭrouch brings his A-game to Run. The biggest of these, compared with The Road, is that it is written in conventional English rather than McCarthy’s strange way of crafting prose. This is not to malign Run it has plenty of its own merits. Both are narratives about a collapse of civilization focusing around a journey with heavy themes of family. The best comparison I have for Run is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Suffice to say, I was not disappointed by this book. It is one of his earlier works, released in 2011 (ten years old!). This brings me to Run, the only standalone of his that my local branch library had at that moment (the system has more). Naturally, I would seek out more of his work.

Later, I read his novel Recursion (beloved on book nerd reddit) and was blown away. Jemisin had received for her story Emergency Skin. When I finished the collection, I thought that Crouch’s story deserved the Hugo nomination that N. He was an author I had heard of from reddit, but otherwise had no real contact with his work. Blake Crouch first impressed me with his short story Summer Frost in Amazon Original Stories collection Forward.

Summer frost by blake crouch