Whiteouts

When Maurice Coleman reveals early on in this psychological thriller that his dad, "didn't even mind when I stabbed him in the kitchen. After that I think he loved me even more", we know there is a good chance that things aren't going to turn out well for the Coleman family. These suspicions are soon enough confirmed when the 19-year-old Maurice's first act after discharging himself from a private mental facility is to discard his medication and buy an automatic pistol from a redneck farmer. He then checks into a low-rent motel to purchase some sex and crack cocaine before contacting the various members of his nicely dysfunctional family to lure them to an isolated hunting club. Whiteouts is set in an America where weapons made for warfare are freely bought and sold on the streets every day, making it more likely than not for someone like Maurice to be on the loose with a gun. As the story unfolds through a series of different voices--the oddly seductive Maurice himself, his mother, her lover, his sister and father--so the emotional complexities are neatly unravelled and the cataclysmic climax is suitably dramatic as the family gather in the teeth of a snow storm high in the mountains of New York State. Psychological and thrilling. --Nick Wroe


Genre: Thriller