The Conveyance
Brian W. Matthews
JournalStone
June, 2016
Reviewed by Michael R. Collings
Brian W. Matthews’ The Conveyance is one of those rare books that is extremely difficult to review. Everything about it—setting, characters, plot, language—is perfectly suited to embrace readers and carry them along to a startling yet fully logical and coherent conclusion. The most trivial-seeming elements are introduced, almost unnoticed, yet ultimately play key roles in plot development, making readers—at least this reader—think, “Of course. Why didn’t I see that before?” Yet to point to those bits, or those that more clearly relate directly to what happens in the novel, runs the risk of spoiling moments of surprise, incredulity, horror, suspense, and outright emotional upheaval.
As a psychologist, Dr. Brad Jordan is used to keeping secrets, including potentially devastating secrets. The Conveyance begins with him approaching one such secret, closely harbored by twelve-year-old Doug Belle. Following a near-fatal accident on the way home, he confronts another when he realizes that his wife, Toni, is behaving oddly; and yet another that night, at the home of his best friend, Frank Swinicki.
Gradually, he and Frank unravel a complex web of deeper, darker, and deadlier secrets involving bizarre dolls, their maker, and the tiny town of Emersville. This last level proves the most dangerous of all and—through Matthews’ deft mastery—encompasses all the secrets that have gone before, binding them into a massive, long-lived conspiracy that alters Brad’s essential understanding of reality and threatens the existence of humanity itself.
Matthews does a sterling job of uniting individual elements into a seamless narrative. With bits reminiscent of such disparate novels as Stephen King’s Needful Things, Dean R. Koontz’s wonderfully comic horror tale, Ticktock, and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, The Conveyance remains a highly original story, captivating from its earliest moments and simultaneously compelling and impelling. Highly recommended.
