Dominance Read online

  Praise for Will Lavender and

  DOMINANCE

  “Lavender is Houdini-level dexterous at the sleight-of-verb necessary to keep the reader guessing, doubting, perplexed and attentive throughout the book. Characters lie, memories lie, senses lie, and underpinning it all is the game-that’s-not-a-game, this enigmatic Procedure, that pulls like an uncontrollable undertow from beyond the grave. Who is Paul Fallows? Maybe the students in Dominance would have been better off never knowing the answer, but Lavender’s readers will be abundantly rewarded.”

  —BookPage

  “The Silence of the Lambs meets And Then There Were None . . . a terrific premise.”

  —Booklist

  “Mr. Lavender should be able to write his third, fourth and fifth puzzle-crazy potboilers on the visceral strength of the first two . . . Dominance is quick and complicated . . . Part of Lavender’s sleight of hand involves flattering the reader’s keen intelligence . . . And he writes with real enthusiasm.”

  —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

  “Lavender’s novel is a literary labyrinth, the kind made popular by Jorge Luis Borges, without ever losing the pace or the pleasure of a taut thriller.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “If you like puzzles you will enjoy this book. If you are a fan of twists you will like this book. If you like both puzzles AND twists then you will probably flip over this book. It will have you guessing until the final page.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “A twisting, tilting, hall-of-mirrors funhouse of a book . . . [The plot] unfolds like origami with razor-sharp edges . . . Dominance reveals its secret stealthily, maintaining the mystery and suspense of the present while divulging the secrets of the past. That is a tricky tightrope, and it is marvelously executed.”

  —The Louisville Courier-Journal

  “The self-reflective process of literary criticism known as ‘deconstructing the text’ becomes a diabolical game of murder in Dominance, an academic mystery by Will Lavender that gleefully illustrates the dangers of losing yourself in a book . . . Lavender has the devious skills to write a twisted puzzle mystery.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Silence of the Lambs, Agatha Christie, and maybe Pynchon are prerequisites for this thriller set in small-town academia.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  “If anyone out there is looking for a good summer book, maybe a beach read, instead of reading something frivolous and light, why not try something that will actually make you think? Will Lavender writes puzzle books: half mystery, half thriller, with a literary twist thrown in for good measure. His newest book, Dominance, will make you think. A lot.”

  —Fort Worth Fiction

  “If you enjoy puzzling twists and turns, and suspense that doesn’t let up even on the last page, you should delve into Dominance.”

  —Bowling Green (KY) Daily News

  “[A] taut second standalone . . . Full-bodied characters, an effective gothic atmosphere, and a deliciously creepy, unpredictable finale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lavender’s exciting second literary thriller (after Obedience) pulls readers right into the hunt. Aldiss reminds us of a sexy Hannibal Lecter, and the mystery of the reclusive author Paul Fallows and his connection to the class is riveting. Well-drawn characters, excellent plot, good use of flashbacks, and many red herrings will keep the pages turning to the very end.”

  —Library Journal

  “Lavender takes on another puzzle-within-a-thriller . . . Twisty and turny, with all kinds of side roads . . . [He] manages to maintain the novel’s taut, sinister atmosphere from the first page to the last . . . Readers who loved Lavender’s first book will doubtless delight in this one.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “With nods to Christie, Poe and Lovecraft, Lavender crafts a deadly game of obsession, full of riddles, subterfuge, grim revelation and red herrings galore.”

  —Winnipeg (MB) Free Press

  “A brilliant concept, brilliantly executed. Dominance soars to the top of the thriller genre by infusing its rapid-fire plot with the mysteries of literature and authorship and offering cutting-edge (so to speak) psychological insights into minds both noble and horrifically demented. You’ll never look at professors, authors or, well, books the same again. Oh, and that last page . . .”

  —Jeffery Deaver, #1 international bestselling author of Carte Blanche and The Burning Wire

  “Will Lavender constructs plots with the expertise of a Parisian baker, masterfully layering mystery on top of mystery until, just when you think the whole thing might topple over, he sets it all together into a dangerously delectable mille-feuille of storytelling. Do save room for seconds.”

  —Graham Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Sherlockian

  “Dominance is a twisting, intriguing and compelling psychological thriller of the first order. Will Lavender has created a clever maze of a plot, fraught with dark corridors and deadly ends. With this novel in your hands, you’ll be voraciously turning the pages late into the night, maybe thinking you’re a step ahead, until you realize you’ve always been a step behind—right up until the stunning final scene.”

  —Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Fragile

  “Will Lavender has laid out a rich feast for fans of psychological thrillers—at the heart of it all is a weird, addictive game that’s far more dangerous than anyone realizes. This intricately layered story of murders past and present generates plenty of chilling twists and turns, right up to the final sentence.”

  —John Verdon, bestselling author of Think of a Number and Shut Your Eyes Tight

  Praise for Will Lavender’s debut puzzle thriller, Obedience

  “It’s a genuine, if slightly perverse, kick to follow every Byzantine clue in this bizarre game . . . If you solve this one without peeking at the last chapter, it’s an automatic A.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Evidence that crime fiction is hardly a played-out genre . . . A mystery as ambitious as one could imagine.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Taut, twisty, and highly original: the pages turned themselves.”

  —Peter Abrahams

  “A thriller that will strike some as a mix of John Fowles’ The Magus and Stephen King’s The Shining . . . The conspiracy becomes so all-encompassing, so elaborate.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Obedience draws you in and never lets go—and what a ride!”

  —David Baldacci

  “Quite a twisty tale . . . Haunting . . . Irresistible.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Obedience is a full course-load of sinister fun.”

  —Salon.com

  “A taut and timely thriller that explores the dark side of academia, where classrooms are dangerous and paranoia abounds.”

  —Karin Slaughter

  “A devilishly inventive debut that reads like a house of mirrors. Nothing is what it seems, right up to the devastating finale.”

  —Brian Freeman

  “With superb confidence, Lavender constructs a brilliant fictional web of lies, inventively warping the psychological thriller to fit the confines of a scholarly investigation. An inspired thriller.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Terrific debut . . . A wonderful book with an emotional punch at the end.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “Tautly strung debut . . . Lavender tears a page of out Milgram’s notebooks and sets into motion a chain of events that escalates far beyond its intended intellectual exercise. . . . Mystery fans will be satisfied to hang on around the story’s hairpin turns as the list of suspects swells and narrows with the uneart
hing of each clue, but Lavender . . . is aiming at a broader target and posing deeper questions.”

  —BookPage

  “Chilling, unpredictable . . . a delicious mystery.”

  —Sacramento News & Review

  “Lavender’s first novel suggests he has a bright future. Obedience builds to a swirling conclusion.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “Will Lavender stuns with this compelling thriller . . . A new master of the genre.”

  —The Louisville Courier-Journal

  “Infuriating, brilliant puzzle . . . [An] intriguing and addicting psychological thriller from a talented new writer worthy of our undivided attention.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  “As a fan, reading—and reviewing—many, many crime novels, it is a pleasure to discover a book that goes out of its way to try something different and really make the reader think. Will Lavender has done this.”

  —Crimesquad.com

  “The most gripping book of this or any other year.”

  —Edmonton (AB) Journal

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  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  First Class - 1994

  Chapter 1

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  The Class - 1994

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 7

  The Class - 1994

  Chapter 8

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  The Class - 1994

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The Class - 1994

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  The Class - 1994

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  The Class - 1994

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 25

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 35

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 36

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 37

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 38

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 39

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 40

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 41

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 42

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 43

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 44

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 51

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 52

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 53

  Iowa - 1994

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Alex - Present Day

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Acknowledgments

  Author Will Lavender

  ‘The Descartes Circle’ Excerpt

  “The heart of the matter is that in this gentleman’s article all people are divisible into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ The ordinary must live obediently and have no right to transgress the law—because, you see, they’re ordinary. The extraordinary, on the other hand, have the right to commit all kinds of crimes and to transgress the law in all kinds of ways, for the simple reason that they are extraordinary. That would seem to have been your argument, if I am not mistaken.”

  Raskolnikov smiled again.

  —Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

  Oh, what we once thought we had, we didn’t

  And what we have now will never be that way again

  So we call upon the author to explain

  —Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “We Call Upon the Author”

  Unusual Literature Course Rocks Small Vermont Campus

  by Ethan Moore, Jasper Mirror Staff Writer

  January 9, 1994

  The Jasper College Faculty Board has approved a controversial night class on a vote of 5 to 4.

  LIT 424: Unraveling a Literary Mystery will be taught by famed professor and literary scholar Dr. Richard Aldiss. Aldiss contacted the Jasper administration late last year and was adamant that this campus was where he would teach if he did return to the classroom. He will teach via satellite from the Rock Mountain Correctional Facility, where he is serving consecutive life sentences for the brutal 1982 murders of two female Dumant University graduate students. He will be prohibited from speaking about his crimes and from using his victims’ names. The class will be open to nine undergraduate students, each of whom will be specially chosen from the literature honors program.

  There are those who adamantly oppose the course and its professor. Dr. Daniel Goodhurn, a Virgil scholar at Dumant, claims that Jasper College is making a horrible mistake by bringing Aldiss back into the classroom.

  “Is Richard Aldiss a genius?” Goodhurn asked. “Of course. But what that man did to two innocent women at this institution goes beyond evil. I ask you: What will the students at Jasper learn from this monster? Richard is a twisted, deceitful individual. I assure you that teaching literature will not be his intention in this class. His true mission will be revealed very late in the semester—and by then it may too late.”

  Those in favor of the night class, however, are just as unwavering.

  Dr. Stanley M. Fisk, professor emeritus at Jasper College, says that Richard Aldiss will “inject life into a program of study that has become very stale. The man and his work, especially his research on the reclusive novelist Paul Fallows, is truly ground-breaking. Our students here at Jasper will be reenergized by the great professor. In my mind it is as simple as that. Aldiss will revolutionize how they think about books.”

  The class will begin on the first evening of the winter term. The nine students have been chosen and will be allowed to turn down the invitation if they so desire.

  First Class

  1994

  1

  Just after dark they rolled in the television where the murderer would appear. It was placed at the front of the lecture hall, slightly off center so the students in back could see. Two men wearing maintenance uniforms checked the satellite feed and the microphones, then disappeared as silently as they had come. It was now five minutes before the class was to begin, and everything was ready.

  This was the first class of its kind, and its novelty—or perhaps its mystery—made it the most talked-about ever offered at tiny Jasper College. As mandated by the school president, there were nine students in the classroom. They were the best of the best in the undergrad literature program at Jasper. Now, on the first night of the semester, they waited anxiously for their professor to emerge on the screen.

  The class was LIT 424: Unraveling a Literary Mystery. I
t had been offered at night because this was the only viable time, the only hour when the warden would allow the murderer free to teach. He would teach, if you believed the rumors, from a padded cell. Others said he would be in front of a greenscreen, with special effects to replicate a lectern before him—an illusion of a classroom. The rest claimed he would simply be shackled to his chair in an orange jumpsuit because state law prohibited anything else. They had to remember what this man had done, these people said. They had to remember who he was.

  The room was warm with the closeness of bodies. The chalkboard seemed to glisten, even though the Vermont night outside was bitterly cold. The quads were mostly silent, save for the protesters who stood the stipulated two hundred yards from Culver Hall, where the night class would be held. The class met in the basement of Culver for this reason: the powers-that-be at Jasper did not want the protesters to be able to see what was happening on that TV screen.

  The few students who were out at that cold hour witnessed the nervous candlelight of the protest vigil from a distance, through the copse of beech and oak that dotted the woodsy campus. A light snow fell, flakes rushing upward in the January wind like motes of dust. Not far away, Lake Champlain purred in the wind. It was as if, one freshman said as he looked down at the scene from a high dormitory window, someone were about to be executed.

  Just beyond the protesters, in a building that was dark save for a few bottom-floor lights, a pair of state policemen sat in a room the size of a broom closet, drinking coffee and watching their own blank feed on a tiny screen.

  Unraveling a Literary Mystery—this too had been contested. The president of the college chose the title because it sounded to him fitting for what the professor had in mind. But in fact the president did not know exactly what the class would entail. He could not know; the murderer had only hinted at a “literary game” his students would play in the class. About his syllabus he had spoken to no one.

  It was this inability to even guess at what was about to happen that silenced the classroom now. In the weeks before the semester had begun, when they went home to their families on Christmas break, the students who had registered for LIT 424 had time to think. To weigh their decision to take this strange course. They wondered if something could go wrong in that lecture hall, if their professor could somehow . . . it sounded crazy, yes. Most of them did not say it aloud, or if they did, they spoke only to their roommates or their closest friends. Slight whispers, torn away by the wind, carried off into nothingness.