From the opening paragraph of this tense, nervy thriller it is obvious that one is in the hands of a very good writer indeed. Jane Smiley, who has picked up both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics' Circle award on the way to this, her eighth novel, knows how to create a fictional world so complete that it not only draws you in but refuses to let you go again, so that your first impulse on reaching page 306 is to turn feverishly back to page one and begin all over again. Duplicate Keys is a murder mystery, and is unapologetically paced and structured according to the rule of that genre, but it is also a penetrating study of friendship and a merciless portrait of the less than successful lower echelons of the hippy generation. If you want a book to escape into, here it is.
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