Readers are hooked by what’s to come when Cook foreshadows events with direct statements like “Stick with me here” or “I’ll get to that. And then there are books like this one, that leave you feeling maybe the author couldn’t figure it out either! Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy ( Your California Privacy Rights) and Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. But Jeff is not all too pleased with the way Francis spends the part of his life he enabled him to have by saving him. Upon discovering that the man, Francis, is a renowned art dealer, Jeff finds a job at his gallery in hopes of connecting with Francis and processing the event.

Insisting that his former classmate’s “appearing out of nowhere must have sparked some old circuitry” in his brain, Cook recounts how, in his early 20s, he brought a drowned man back to life on Santa Monica beach. Then one of the friends, Jeff Cook begins to share an account of an important event that changed the course of his life. As Wilson brings his work to its rapid-paced conclusion, he—like a pilot doing everything he can to stick a tight landing—jettisons everything that is not absolutely necessary to the plot so that he can reach his conclusion at the right time, with the right force.

I trailed him through the terminal, his soft-leather briefcase and fresh-looking roll-aboard making me wish I’d replaced my scruffy backpack with something more adult. His debut novel, “ The Interloper,” is a solid, if sometimes predictable, first-person recollection of a revenge plot that went horribly south. The book is narrated by a not-very-successful author who coincidentally meets Jeff, an old acquaintance from college while waiting for a delayed flight. Mouth to Mouth is] powered by a kind of ominous propulsive forward momentum right up until the very end, which is unexpected and inevitable, as all the best endings are. With puzzling urgency, Jeff divulges the strange story of how he once rescued Francis, a wealthy art dealer.

Funky eyeglasses, a striped jacket, and one woman’s cape made it clear to anyone who saw them that they were nonconformists, people of taste, art-world cognoscenti. Wilson wraps some big questions in this page-turner: Is destiny something that merely happens to us?As Jeff’s life becomes more closely intertwined with Francis’s through his relationship with Francis’s daughter, Chloe, he finds his loyalties tested and begins to wonder just what he unleashed when he saved Francis’s life. It is a book that plays with the reader a little, which I always appreciate, the narration from Jeff being undercut regularly by our actual narrator, who comes to the forefront and then retreats again many times. While reading this I was imaging it as a stage play; a two hander with Jeff telling the story to his old college friend in a bar. While waiting for a delayed flight to Berlin, Jeff bumped into an old acquaintance from UCLA and the two spent the downtime in the First Class Lounge—Jeff’s treat.