Review: Concrete Desert
February 27, 2012
Concrete Desert by Jon Talton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I started reading 'Concrete Desert' at Lux Cafe on Central Av. (Phoenix) on a saturday morning and by sunday night I had finished it. For someone who's never been to Phoenix, the book will look no more (and no less) than a good thriller story with the twist of a PhD in history involved in it. Something like a book version of an episode of Cold Case that you can easily imagine turned into a movie; an American version of Millenium where the cold Swedish snow has been traded for the equally extreme July heat of the Valley of the Sun.
But for those whose life has somehow crossed the city, the book will uncover a rare extra layer of sense of place; it'll sketch a city overwhelmed by its own growth but that not very long ago was a small desert town in a remote place of which Evil didn't seem to be aware of. Clearly written by a native who grew up along with the suburban machine, Concrete Desert shows the local aspect of the city with probably the least "localness" of the world. And that in itself is worth much more than the dollar that Amazon will charge you for reading in on a screen.