It isn't easy to come up
with a mystery that keeps readers compulsively turning pages, so give
first-time novelist Will Lavender credit for anchoring his book Obedience to a gripping premise. At
a small Southern college, three students with troubled pasts sign up for a
"Logic & Reasoning" class, taught by a professor no one seems to know much
about. On the first days, Professor Williams proposes a hypothetical: There's
this girl named Polly, who's disappeared from her home, and if the students
can't figure out what happened to her, she's going to die by the end of the
term. Mary Butler, a fastidious overachiever, takes it upon herself to do extra
research into the case, and discovers that it mirrors the real-life abduction
of another girl, who has ties to Professor Williams. Mary researches the
professor as well, and discovers he was involved in a plagiarism scandal a
decade ago, and has been a recluse ever since. Then, in the midst of her
investigation, Mary is invited to a class party at Williams' home, and on her
way out the door, the hostess hands her a note that reads: "None of this is
real. I AM NOT HIS WIFE."
As a mind-game, Obedience is superior, but as
literature, it falls a little short. Though Lavender is a college professor
himself, he only gets the classroom descriptions right; his characters don't
really talk or act like recognizable college students. Obedience's story, too—like
nearly all good mindbenders—takes a turn toward the ludicrous once it has
to unkink itself at the end. Still, there's enough going on below the surface
to make Obedience
more than just a diverting puzzle. This is a mystery for the Google Age, about
what happens when the answers we're expecting to find aren't a mouse-click
away—or what happens when they're incomplete, or misleading. Obedience is a cautionary tale
about teacher-student trust, peppered with some vivid warnings to Lavender's
future classes about why he probably won't let them cite Wikipedia as a source
on term papers.