The Last Town

Blake Crouch Expertly Finishes Wayward Pines Series with "The Last Town"

I have been a fan of Blake Crouch for a few years now. If you spend any time looking around this blog, you'll see me going on and on about his outstanding thriller RUN, which I think is still one of the best thriller/suspense novels of all time.

Crouch manages to get you care about characters while pacing his novels at break-neck speed. The intensity of each novel, even ones in a series, manage to ratchet up the tension until you are ready to explode. If you are reading it in paperback, you cannot turn the pages fast enough, and if you are reading it digitally, the one-tenth of a second it takes for the device to go to the next page feels like an eternity.

Crouch followed up RUN with the novel PINES. It told the story of Secret Service agent Ethan Burke who wants up in the strange town of Wayward Pines. It seems like the perfect town, set high in the mountains, and he was sent there to find a missing agent, but things are not what they seem. To tell you much more is to spoil the plot and that would be a shame.

The second novel in the series was entitled Wayward Pines and it was also brilliant, but if you haven't read the first one, I can't tell you a damn thing about the second. Suffice it to say, the action was intense, the drama was brilliant and the story was breathtaking in scope and speed.

Now, as Wayward Pines is set to become a Fox Network TV mini-series, Crouch finishes his trilogy with The Last Town. Once again, Crouch proves that he is one of the best thriller/suspense writers out there. The novel is truly un-put-downable. I finished it in just over a day. It picks up right where the second novel leaves off and many, many exciting, terrifying and thrilling things happen. None of it I can really tell you about without a huge SPOILERS alert, and I hate writing that, so I am not going to do it.

Seriously, if you love action, terror, mystery and heart-stopping suspense then you need to read the Wayward Pines trilogy. Trust me, you'll be into them so fast that you'll read all three in less than a week. You will not regret it and, if you are like me, you will be anxious to see how they transfer this one to TV.