In Tailspinner by S.W. Hubbard, Police Chief Frank Bennett notices a curious confluence of teens and young adults committing daring and dangerous acts in his town of Trout Run, NY. Charlie Dunleavy comes to the area to hike but is found wandering incoherent and hallucinating from dehydration and exhaustion. Laurel Caine walks out to the edge of a bridge and leaps to her death. Billy Flynn, home from serving in Afghanistan with the Marines, has a violent episode in the general store. Jenna Burlingame climbs out an upper window of the church and onto its roof and has to be rescued by Frank. As Frank and his partner, Earl, seek to get to the bottom of this rash of strange occurrences, they must sift through a lot of clues related to numerous threads of the case before someone else gets hurt.
I really enjoy the books of Hubbard, who puts a lot of work into creating depth and disparate threads that may seem unrelated but blend together by the end into a unified whole. In the process, she surprises and delights readers, who find themselves hanging on the details. This is very true for Tailspinner, which gives a separate plot line to each of the significant characters in the book. I really appreciated getting to know each character and what made that individual behave in the curious manner in which she or he acted.
I also liked getting to see the way each person acts in relation to an authoritarian figure. Hubbard always includes some sort of social issue in her books, and she explores the draw of dictatorial people to some people in this book. Why do certain individuals respond by embracing such figures and their teachings, while others don’t give in at all? And what makes such authoritarian people have power over certain people? The exploration of this question actually creates more questions than it answers, but without making the book feel like it is missing anything. Instead, it makes us readers examine this phenomenon and think further about the topic.
Danny Campbell proves yet again that he is an excellent audiobook narrator and a strong choice for performing Tailspinner. Campbell has a voice that is well suited for the role of Frank Bennett. Though the book is written in third person, we see much of the book through Frank’s eyes, making the choice of narrator all the more valuable.
I thoroughly appreciated listening to Tailspinner and getting to follow the depth of the many angles of the book. I enjoyed the way the book challenges listeners to reflect upon difficult truths and valuable details that make listeners ponder issues that we might not consider on our own. This book was really powerful and gets five stars.
Disclaimer: I received this book for free for review purposes, but that had no influence on the content of my review.
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