I have loved everything Mr. Winters has written and this is no exception. Some authors excel at using their distinctive voice to get after similar stories in new ways. Mr. Winters, on the other hand, has a seemingly infinite number of unique, authentic voices and covers such varied ground. I don't know how he does it but I hope he keeps doing it.

This was a DNF for me. The blend of genres just didn't work for me this time, but it could very well have been my mood.

The Quiet Boy is part medical mystery, part murder mystery, showing one family's trauma from the point of view of a medical malpractice lawyer and his son. I always enjoy Ben Winters's novels and this was no exception. A reasonably quick read about the mysteries we can solve and those we can't.

I love Ben Winters, but Quiet Boy, is a bit of a challenging read. Jay Shenk could be described as an ambulance chaser, a “Better Call Saul” kind of lawyer with a heart of gold, but who doesn’t mind a simple, quick malpractice case that goes quickly to settlement. Unfortunately, 16 year old Wesley Keener’s case is not quick or easy. Hurt during school lunch hour rough housing with his friends, Wesley hits his head hard on a bench in. Rushed into surgery, the boy emerges totally changed….never speaking, never aging, never eating or sleeping, just walking endlessly. The story is told in a double time line of 2009, and 2019 with two courtroom trials making up most of the action. The characterizations are well written, but unless you enjoy a mass-up of speculative fiction, legal thriller, and a slow mystery reveal, this may not be the novel you’re looking for.

In 2008, a boy named Wesley Keener suffered a traumatic head injury at school. Following his brain surgery, he begins pacing the small confines of his hospital room without reprieve. He doesn’t stop to eat or sleep. And as time unfolds, the careful observations of the boy reveal that his hair doesn’t ever seem to get any longer and he never seems to get any older. Personal injury attorney Jay Shenk rushes to the hospital after getting word about this case, intending on trying to pick up a medical malpractice case that seems like a slam dunk but he ends up with something far more on his hands.

This is my fifth book by Winters and I’m pretty sure if it was my first it would’ve been a DNF. The Quiet Boy is a very slow-to-build story and at first glance, it’s a bit deceiving. It comes across as nothing more than a courtroom legal thriller but it’s definitely more than meets the eye and deserves a little patience. It’s a dense yet captivating story that will keep you guessing till the very ambiguous ending where you’ll have to just keep on guessing. I appreciated the subtle hint at answers, the suggestion that nothing is ever just black and white, that nothing has just a single interpretation, that it’s all based on your own perception… but I wanted (or needed) less ambiguity and more transparency.

QUICK TAKE: I freakin' love Ben Winters. THE LAST POLICEMAN and GOLDEN STATE are two of my favorite recent scifi reads, so I've been so excited for THE QUIET BOY. That being said, I was ultimately very underwhelmed by this one. Buyer beware, this is much more a family legal mystery than it is a scifi story, so just know that going in. Had I know that, I think I would have enjoyed this more. I didn't and I found this one to be a tedious read as I waited for something to happen. It's really slow storytelling without many twists and turns and the ending left me annoyed and with a bunch of unanswered questions. might be one of the bigger disappointments for me this year.

When the inexplicable occurs, who bears the blame?

That’s one of the central questions in “The Quiet Boy,” the new novel from Ben H. Winters. It’s a bifurcated story – on one side, a medical mystery, on the other, a capital murder case – where both tales are connected through time by a tragic event that ultimately proves damaging to two different families.

Winters has never been one to be bound by genre constraints, so it’s no surprise to see the author venturing in a different direction. Here, he’s tackling the courtroom drama with the same genre fluidity and narrative inventiveness that he brings to all of his work. Sad and surprising, “The Quiet Boy” crosses all manner of literary borders to capture these myriad lives.

In 2008, a lawyer named Jay Shenk, deemed by some to be an “ambulance chaser” (though he finds that descriptor distasteful) finds himself involved with the Keener family. One day, young Wesley Keener – a teenager – is rushed to the hospital with an injury requiring surgery. Unfortunately, not all of Wesley wakes up. What remains is a dead-eyed automaton, endlessly walking in circles around his hospital room – a phenomenon that no one can explain.

When Jay meets Beth, Wesley’s mother, outside the hospital and learns about what happened to her son, he encourages her to sue the facility for malpractice. She decides to sign on with the reluctant agreement of her husband Richard.

In 2019, Jay Shenk is a shell of himself, far removed from the glory days of his profitable practice. His grown son Ruben – once a vital part of both his life and his work – is estranged from him, working at a salad restaurant. And yet, when Beth Keener approaches him for legal help – this time, for a murder case involving another member of her family – Jay takes the case, despite the multitude of issues surrounding the situation, including many connections to that previous lawsuit a decade prior.

Back and forth we move between these two timelines, watching as each narrative plays out in a manner that seems inevitable … right until it isn’t. There’s plenty more bubbling beneath the surface of this situation than any of these players understand. The path we follow is littered with cultists and rock stars, even as we make our way toward the hope of resolution, even if there’s little chance of finding one that truly satisfies those who are suffering.

I’m on record for being a big fan of genre flexibility; there’s a lot of value in harnessing the tropes of one genre for use under the auspices of another. It’s one of the things that Winters is particularly good at, bringing together seemingly disparate elements with engaging seamlessness.

It’s certainly the case here, with Winters taking the framework of the courtroom drama and introducing an assortment of differing flavors and ideas to create something different. And as the narratives progress, those new flavors ebb and flow – sometimes, everything seems rather straightforward, while at other points, things get … weird – subtly and not-so-subtly altering the landscape with abject smoothness, taking the reader along for the ride.

There’s something scary about emptiness, about the idea that whatever spark it is that makes us us can be extinguished. And if that fundamental spark can go out, who’s to say it was ever truly alight in the first place? Wesley is a ghost made flesh, a wandering golem moving through the world with metronomic absence. He haunts every page of this book, his presence shuffling through every action and interaction undertaken. The loss that he represents – and how it irrevocably alters the worlds and worldviews of those close to him – is frightening in both its reality and its unknowableness.

“The Quiet Boy” is quietly propulsive, if that makes sense – there’s no flashiness, even with the assorted reveals and surprises sprinkled liberally throughout. Too often, one can FEEL the effort of a writer to push the pace, but that’s not the case here. Winters sweeps us up without us even knowing we’ve been swept – it’s the kind of book you fall into, only to reemerge pages later wondering where the time went.

Part of that immersion is born of the people we meet. Jay Shenk is a fascinating figure, a man who seemingly embodies all that is wrong with the legal profession. Yet he is ALSO a crusader of sorts, in his own way. Yes, he is motivated by the money, but it is not his sole motivation. He believes (or at least believes he believes) in justice. He seeks to do right by his clients even as he (hopefully) profits from their relationship. He is charming in a too-shiny sort of way and brims over with love for his son Ruben. Overall, he seems to be a good guy … but it’s complicated.

Ruben, for his part, offers an engaging dichotomy as well. The teenaged boy we meet in 2008 is full of hope, a smart young man who idolizes his father to the detriment of other parts of his life. The twentysomething Ruben of 2019 is a much sadder, more cynical person – someone continuously dealing with the emotional aftermath of seeing an idol fall. The adventures of that latter Ruben in particular tie in beautifully with the complexity of that particular father-son relationship.

And through it all walks Wesley Keener, pulling his family (and others) along in the wake of his ceaseless circling.

“The Quiet Boy” delights in its own mysteries, answering questions with other questions and endowing the proceedings with an entertaining opacity. It is a story of legal exploits, to be sure, but it also a story of fathers and sons, of the dual prices of pride and obsession and of the abstract nature of the self. We all contain multitudes … until we don’t.

I tried to get into this one but I just couldn't. I DNF' but maybe I can come back to it in the future at some point. Thanks as always to Netgalley for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ben Winters can do no wrong! Few authors produce such consistently good content. Going to read every upcoming release of his for quite some time.

Realllly disappointing... after loving Golden State by this author, I was expecting a twisty dystopia/sci fi book that I couldn’t put down- this ended up being slow and weirdly focused on the medical/legal aspects instead of the sci fi piece that it pitches.

THE QUIET BOY
Ben H. Winters
Mulholland Books
ISBN-13: 978-0316505444
Hardcover
Thriller

THE QUIET BOY is a haunting work that sinks its hook into the from the first page and never lets go even after its story has ended. Author Ben H. Winters is primarily known for his works of speculative fiction, particularly his Last Policeman trilogy. He stretches his considerable talent even further in this atmospheric, genre-blurring tale that is by turns mysterious, puzzling, and ultimately frightening.

THE QUIET BOY ping-pongs back and forth between 2008 and 2019. It is told in a third-person, quasi-wiseass narrative style that befits the professional demeanor of Jay Albert Shenk, one of its primary protagonists. Shenk is a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in personal injury and malpractice cases. Winters introduces him in the mix of the story by taking the reader through Shenk’s method of locating and acquiring clients through a combination of stringer referrals, legal acumen, and Las Vegas schmooze. He is assisted in this endeavor by his adopted son Ruben, who is being groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps. Shenk in 2008 believes he has a winning case when he persuades the parents of fourteen-year-old Wesley Keener to retain him for a medical malpractice action. Wesley had sustained a head injury while engaged in otherwise innocent horseplay at school and underwent emergency brain surgery. He displays in the aftermath of the surgery bizarre symptoms which include the apparent inability to communicate, eat or sleep, among other things. Wesley simply walks. It is like nothing anyone has ever seen. That singular fact is actually a problem for the case, one which Shenk is sure that he can overcome with the right witness. As the time for trial approaches he thinks he has found the right one. In the 2019 sections of THE QUIET BOY, however, it is clear that things have not worked out as planned for either the Shenks or the Keeners. Ruben, whose nickname is “Rabbi,” is working as a food prepper in a salad restaurant and is all but estranged from Jay, who he worshipped as a teenager and who is struggling to keep his law practice afloat. The Keeners are in even worse shape, trying to make ends meet to provide Wesley, who is still walking, with the care he needs. They are all brought back together when Richard, Wesley’s father, is accused of murdering one of the expert witnesses in the malpractice trial which occurred ten years before. Beth, Wesley’s mother, asks Jay to represent Richard. Jay reluctantly agrees, although he has absolutely no experience in criminal defense practice. It would be an uphill slog even under the best circumstances, given that Richard, who was found with the murdered victim while holding the literal smoking gun in his hand, readily admits his guilt, does not want legal representation, and is prepared to accept a death penalty. Jay enlists an equally reluctant Ruben as a private investigator --- this occurs as a result of a comedy of errors --- and as a result of a combination of plausible happenstance and dogged persistence uncovers what actually occurred, both in the present and the past. Some light is ultimately shed on the “why” and “what” of poor Wesley as well.

If you think while you are reading THE QUIET BOY that it is a courtroom thriller you would partially be right, though it is a mystery and in some very special ways a supernatural thriller as well, and a hair-raising one at that. The revelations concerning Wesley which are saved for the conclusion of THE QUIET BOY are chilling, to say the least, and turn the entire story on its literal head. No peeking. You won’t get it anyway without knowing what went before. Let’s just say that my inclination on finishing THE QUIET BOY was to round up my children, all of whom are well into their adulthood, and hide them away. That happens when you read a novel with powerful plotting and characterization, and THE QUIET BOY has it by the truckful. Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2021, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Quiet Boy is not my usual type of book I review on this blog - it's arguably a legal/detective thriller, rather than science fiction or fantasy, although potential fantastical elements are present at times throughout and pose potential explanations for some of what is going on. I'm an attorney in real life, practicing in New York, and so while I grew up loving legal dramas on TV (hello Law & Order), I've found it hard to enjoy legal matters in fiction recently, due to inaccuracies driving me a bit crazy. But in books, trials and other legal references can often make me smile when done right, and so when I was offered an ARC to The Quiet Boy, which suggested two trials as well as a potential tie to the supernatural, I was willing to give it a shot.

The Quiet Boy is unfortunately, everything I absolutely despise about the worst legal dramas in fiction, despite the claims by the author in the acknowledgements that he did research at a medical malpractice firm. The book features an exaggeratedly incompetent and somewhat awful med-mal/personal injury attorney, two timelines featuring two trials - a civil in the older one and a criminal trial in the present day timeline - that are portrayed horribly unrealistically for no good reason, with just bad legal practices shown repeatedly in unrealistic ways, and then relies upon a totally impractical legal solution to come up with a "happy" ending. And the characters themselves aren't really that interesting, or develop in interesting ways, with the more interesting of the two storylines essentially falling apart in the end into a really boring done way too many times before ending. Just like, no. Maybe for non-lawyers this might be okay, but even then I don't think it's worth your time - if you are a lawyer, skip this one HARD.


----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
2019 - Ruben Shenk is just a line cook at a salad place, when he gets a call he never wanted to get - from his father, medical malpractice/personal injury attorney Jay Shenk.

11 years ago, in 2008, when Ruben was just a kid who idolized his father, Jay Shenk took what he thought was the biggest moneymaking case of his life - a lawsuit against a hospital who treated a boy named Wesley Keener....who came out of surgery with an inexplicable condition of constantly walking around in circles, not responding to anything or needing any sustenance, as if he was merely an automaton. But the case would not go as Jay or Ruben could ever have thought, and changed their lives forever.

In 2019, Ruben had thought he'd put that all long behind him. But his father has been contacted by his former client, Wesley's mother, in desperate need of help: for Wesley's father Richard had been charged with murder of a key witness from the civil trial. His father, mistaking the word "defective" in Ruben's online profile for "detective," has asked him desperately to investigate the situation, and to return to the event from his childhood that traumatized him, to figure out what's going on....before Richard is sentenced to death.
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The Quiet Boy is a combination of a legal thriller and a detective novel, with some potential supernatural elements featuring the boy who seems hollow (the eponymous quiet boy) and the cultish theories that a group of recurring characters have about him. Those theories are never really substantiated besides in how certain characters react to them, with them forming the homes and despairs of a few of the characters involved, but they're really not that important here.

What is important are the two storylines - the 2008 and 2019 ones, with the 2008 being a civil litigation legal thriller and the 2019 one being more of a detective storyline of Ruben trying to figure out what's really going on before it's too late. The thing is that the book telegraphs where the 2008 storyline is going pretty much immediately by the very presence of the 2019 storyline (which takes up significantly less time in the narrative) - you know from the start that the 2008 trial would go horribly wrong, ruining both Ruben and his father, you just don't quite know how. And that's a large bulk of this novel.

The problem is that it's not an interesting bulk, and it's one that relies upon a whole lot of legal bullshit to put it nicely. Jay Shenk, our protagonist for most of it, is a portrayal of the worst kind of theoretical lawyer, the dude who literally has contacts at local hospitals to let him know when potential personal injury or med mal cases show up in injuries so he can show up at the scene to meet the loved ones of the victims to try and convince them to hire him (the supposed "Ambulance Chaser").* At the same time, despite this web of connections, he....basically is utterly incompetent when faced off with a better opponent, is clearly grasping at straws repeatedly, and so most of his problems are due to incompetence rather than anything interesting, and who finds himself unable to actually know when to give up rather than dig himself into a deeper hole - which okay that's maybe a bit realistic as I know lawyers sort of like that. The best Winters tries to do in making Jay interesting is to have him essentially empathize with all the characters he tries to con into being his clients or helping him, to convince himself he's helping or believing them, which I guess is fine (and yes that's also believable but it's not particularly special). Jay isn't likable or interesting, and his incompetence is more annoying than anything as it leads clearly towards a tragedy.

*Shenk is notably also Jewish, which is itself a problematic trope with all the rest of his negative stereotypical attributes (and Ruben is half the time referred to as Rabbi for little reason), although the author is himself Jewish, soooo take it for what it's worth. There is little examination whatsoever of Shenk's Jewishness or why it matters in the narrative, or even an explanation for why it would be mentioned here, which is really the problem.*

And like the law parts of this novel are just so so bad and unrealistic as to break the narrative. The super rich competent lawyer Jay faces off against, the type whom he HAS to have faced before given his practice gut seems so off guard against, starts with an ORAL motion for summary judgment at a pre-trial discovery conference, which uh, should never be considered and should just result in Jay mocking, but instead it frustrates him and almost works. The novel and Jay give an explanation of Discovery which is completely wrong, and then relies upon a surprise witness in the end to create a major plot twist, which again is just unrealistic as fuck. And the trial part of the 2019 timeline is just awful as well - the defendant keeps insisting he wants to plead guilty against advice of counsel and that he wants to be sentenced to death ASAP, and the Judge acts like there's nothing she can do (which is absolutely not true). And then the ending relies upon a claim that makes no sense, because everything Shenk has been doing has basically been on the record in front of the judge, and relies on a misunderstanding of how the appellate system works in this country.

So yeah the trial parts, making up most of the 08 plotline, aren't good, but the detective plotline nor the character beats, showing the reaction of the Keener family to it all, aren't particularly interesting either....the mother wants desperately for there to be answers, while the father and sister want a quick resolution in anger or just confusion, and have moved on in various ways with the mother becoming withdrawn, the sister becoming a singer whose songs are all inspired by her brother, and the father being well the murderer for reasons that are the mystery. Ruben is the prime character for whom we see most of these developments in the future, and other than him being traumatized by it all, there really isn't anything interesting about him - he has NO other defining plot traits other than regret....and there's nothing really for him to have regretted. Like I kept waiting for there to be some reveal about his past actions, and there never is one. And the detective case goes in some interesting potentially fantastical directions....that basically aren't fully explored only for it all to wind up with the most mundane and overdone solution of all (seriously, the solution must be the same one that shows up once a season in every season of Law & Order).

So you have a legal thriller with bad legal work, not interesting characters, two storylines that go nowhere original, and....nothing else. Hard Pass on this one.

If the name "Ben Winters" is on the cover, you know you're in for an unusual, inventive trip. In this case, the story revolves around an ambulance-chasing attorney who takes on a case that ends up swallowing his life and that of his adoptive son, who is something of a (very) junior partner in the law firm.

The victim: a teen who suffers a head injury, and after emergency surgery, has an unexpected outcome: he doesn't sleep or eat or grow or experience anything human, but simply walks in circles, endlessly. A living boy has been turned into an unthinking golem, and the colorful lawyer is on the hunt for a way to pin the blame on the hospital - though in fact nobody can explain what happened or what caused it. And then, as things grow more desperate, he takes on a murder case, his client the boy's father, with zero criminal law experience. In the meanwhile, a spooky zealot of a man who believes the strangely affected teenager holds the secret of a utopian future, haunts the lawyer's son and the peculiar expert witness who thinks she can explain what happened.

Compared to earlier novels repleat with fully-developed and often bizarre world-building and high concept inventiveness, The Quiet Boy is a bit unbalanced. The case of the boy who walks in circles isn't all that compelling, and the cult=like fanatic who thinks he will usher in peace and enlightenment is spooky, but all of it seems a bit thin next to the endearing and well-developed father-son relationship and the case that dominates their lives. It's as if the novel is a combination of a realistic character-driven legal thriller and one very odd interruption in that reality that is strikingly strange but ends up being somewhat of a MacGuffin. The center of gravity is in the family relationships, not in the boy who has been reduced to a mindless circling figure. I wish there had been more made of the quiet boy himself--it seemed oddly undeveloped--but I certainly enjoyed spending time with the colorful lawyer, his son, and the people who are drawn into their hopeless case.

The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters is a superb read with a well defined plot and characters. Well worth the read!

It's hard to summarize this kaleidoscope of a novel, but Jay Shenk, a lawyer, convinces a bereaved family to sue a hospital in Los Angeles after their son went in for routine surgery and emerges as a hybrid zombie-golem. Shenk must defend the family’s patriarch after he’s charged with murder. There is a lot going on in the narrative and I was tickled by all of it. This is a laugh out loud funny, bizarre creative book that weaves together a murder mystery and medical drama. I found myself grateful to be in Winters’ deft hands.

An ambulance chasing lawyer snags the case of a lifetime when a it teen is suddenly reduced to an automaton after a botched surgery. Is something more than bad medicine going on? Things spiral out of control.