All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
Crown (June 2024)
Reviewed by Dave Simms
This novel just might be this year’s Whalefall, a story which defies true categorization but is full of darkness, mystery, and enough emotion to bring a lumberjack to tears.
2024 is shaping up to be even better than last year, which was astounding for dark fiction. Making a best-of list is going to be a tough one, and it’s only July.
Imagine this tagline: Forrest Gump takes on a serial killer in a decades-long tale that imbues the deepest depths of the human soul and dashes of hope with characters at once familiar and wholly original. It might not work for the publisher but I’m sure it’ll help with readers.
Chris Whitaker already scored a hit with We Begin at the End, but this one dwarfs that effort, especially for fans of thrillers and horror. Patch Macauley, a 13-year-old boy in small town Missouri, was born with only one eye. The neighborhood kids refer to him as a freak but he prefers imagining himself a pirate. When he meets Saint, the two become fast friends, as she functions as his balance and sidekick. Yet, one day, Patch saves Misty Meyer, a wealthy girl, from the abduction of a serial killer. In the process, he winds up in the killer’s lair, held captive next to a girl who he speaks to in the dark.
Once he escapes, the story just begins. Obviously, the event transforms him and he can’t get the girl out of his head. Transfixed, he sets off on a mission to find her and rescue her, just like he did to Misty.
The town falls apart — or is it brought together? — by the tragedy turned triumph, yet nobody notices the damage it has brought to Patch, save for Saint, who aches to free him from the trauma of the dark place he survived.
As the decades creep by and Patch ages, his mission to find the girl never wavers. The town’s search for the killer festers. How many girls has he taken? How many graves will they find?
Patch becomes something far beyond Forrest Gump, somebody who learns to live in those shadows he once escaped from, obsessed with his own mission.
What makes All the Colors of the Dakr work so well is Whitaker’s writing. Reminiscent of Robert McCammon or Dennis Lehane crossed with a vein that digs deep into the pitch of the human soul, the novel resonates long afterwards, both with a smile and echoes tainted with the twists and turns of the characters between the covers.
Every character is necessary, and paints a shade of the dark that makes the title so apt.
This will likely be a film in the near future, and should be, but the sheer brilliance of the storytelling will be nearly impossible to capture outside of the individual’s experience of the scarring trauma scratched out by Whitaker.
Incredibly recommended for thriller fans who love crawling in the darkness.
