Land of the Blind

“A mystery novel of profound depth.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Walter is at his incisive best. . . . Hypnotically compelling." — Publishers Weekly

In this fiendishly clever and darkly funny novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter, explores the bonds and compromises we make as children—and the fatal errors we can make at any time in our lives.

A 400-page confession.

And a murder that took a lifetime to commit.

Jess Walter’s widely acclaimed debut thriller, Over Tumbled Graves, matched a genre-bending plot with exceptional intelligence and human insight. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, it was praised in the Washington Post Book World as a work of “tremendous emotional impact,” and James Patterson wrote that Walter had “just about lapped the field with his superior first novel.”

Now Walter returns to up the ante once again. Land of the Blind brings back Spokane police detective Caroline Mabry—and pits her in a battle of wits against a mysterious, yet oddly familiar figure who appears one Friday night, seeming disoriented and wearing an eye patch. He has a confession to make, the man announces, but he insists on writing it out—and it may take a while.

Nineteen hours later—with the stranger still writing—Caroline finds herself scrambling to investigate not merely a murder, but the story of two men’s darkly intertwined lives…and to find the body that awaits her, somewhere in the city.

The result is a novel of rich characterization and riveting suspense: by turns haunting and witty, but always compelling, Land of the Blind is that rare thing—a suspense novel that is genuinely original.