Another suspenseful psychological thriller from Joyce Carol Oates writing as Rosamond Smith. In this one well-meaning but gullible New Jersey lawyer Michael O’Meara helps reprieve alleged killer Lee Roy Sears who is on death row. When Sears is later set free on parole, O’Meara manages not only to get Sears an artist’s residency, but also welcomes him into his home. Inevitably it’s not long before Sears’ true character starts to emerge and it’s downhill all the way after that. Oates is very good at maintaining tension and although there’s a certain amount of predictability in her plotting, there are enough twists and turns to sustain interest, and I found this a compelling and very enjoyable read – although with perhaps a tad too much gratuitous violence.

I should say at the beginning that I'm not a Joyce Carol Oates fan. I understand her fiction was pathbreaking in the 60s and 70s, but I find it hard to relate to the worlds she describes, and I don't share the assumptions that drive her plots. She is a good but not great stylist with a tendency to bog her stories down with repetition, foreshadowing and flashback--tolerable in literary fiction but fatal for a thriller like Snake Eyes.

The conflict in this story is driven by a primitive veteran and ex-con introduced to a superficial suburban neighborhood that seems more 1950s than 1992, the year the novel is set. Self-indulgent neuroses lurk under the boring pretentiousness of the upper middle class bedroom community. Clunky symbolism abounds, such as one of the main characters' hopeless efforts to dredge his pond that leave him sunburned, scratched, filthy and exhausted. The social commentary would be biting, except that it seems directed at a 1960s era radical chic and art-that-shocks, tired targets for a 1992 book or a 2017 reader.

So I found a thriller that didn't thrill, a satire without current interest and a psychological drama told through pretentious symbolism.

This is a good book. I didn't like it as well as some of her other books but it is still a great book and worth reading.

Great read! Looking forward to reading more by this author! Highly recommend!