A review by monty_reads
A Conspiracy of Tall Men by Noah Hawley
3.0
3.5 stars.
Your name is Linus Owen, & your marriage is vulnerable. It’s not exactly on the rocks, but you & your wife are definitely feeling some strain. You’re home in San Francisco, & your wife, Claudia, is visiting her parents in Chicago. You’re in your office at the university where you’re a professor in conspiracy theories, when two FBI agents show up with news that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash. She was, unbeknownst to you, traveling from New York to Brazil with a male pharmaceutical rep (who had also bought her ticket) when a bomb destroyed their plane.
What do you do if you’re Linus? In Noah Hawley’s satisfyingly twisty-turny debut, you embark on a journey to figure out exactly which forces have conspired to kill your wife.
There’s a blurb on the back cover that calls A Conspiracy of Tall Men “a genre-buster,” & that descriptor is right on the money. It’s an exploration of marriage & loyalty, it’s a deep dive into America’s bizarre tendency to traffic in conspiracy theories, it’s a critique of corporate America, & it does all that in the form of a balls to the wall thriller.
In the course of his mission, Linus collides with various acronymed entities (FBI, CIA, NSA, & one drug-addled agent who may be a member of all three) & travels far out of the Bay Area into the American Southwest as he tries to find a radical leftist who may hold the secret to Claudia’s death.
There’s lots to love about this book – it’s one of my favorites so far this year, as well as the best of the three Noah Hawley books I’ve read – but what makes it work as well as it does is Linus himself. Thanks to the last four years, it’s easy to forget that some conspiracy theories aren’t totally far-fetched. Linus isn’t a QAnon nutjob. He’s reasonable, & he’s hugely empathetic. We feel his grief at the beginning, & we understand why he goes to such lengths to learn the truth about what happened to Claudia.
It’s worth mentioning that Hawley created (and wrote a lot of) both Fargo & Legion for the FX network, & there’s a cleverness in this book that fans of those shows will recognize. It’s rare to find crisp page-turners as relevant as this one.
Your name is Linus Owen, & your marriage is vulnerable. It’s not exactly on the rocks, but you & your wife are definitely feeling some strain. You’re home in San Francisco, & your wife, Claudia, is visiting her parents in Chicago. You’re in your office at the university where you’re a professor in conspiracy theories, when two FBI agents show up with news that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash. She was, unbeknownst to you, traveling from New York to Brazil with a male pharmaceutical rep (who had also bought her ticket) when a bomb destroyed their plane.
What do you do if you’re Linus? In Noah Hawley’s satisfyingly twisty-turny debut, you embark on a journey to figure out exactly which forces have conspired to kill your wife.
There’s a blurb on the back cover that calls A Conspiracy of Tall Men “a genre-buster,” & that descriptor is right on the money. It’s an exploration of marriage & loyalty, it’s a deep dive into America’s bizarre tendency to traffic in conspiracy theories, it’s a critique of corporate America, & it does all that in the form of a balls to the wall thriller.
In the course of his mission, Linus collides with various acronymed entities (FBI, CIA, NSA, & one drug-addled agent who may be a member of all three) & travels far out of the Bay Area into the American Southwest as he tries to find a radical leftist who may hold the secret to Claudia’s death.
There’s lots to love about this book – it’s one of my favorites so far this year, as well as the best of the three Noah Hawley books I’ve read – but what makes it work as well as it does is Linus himself. Thanks to the last four years, it’s easy to forget that some conspiracy theories aren’t totally far-fetched. Linus isn’t a QAnon nutjob. He’s reasonable, & he’s hugely empathetic. We feel his grief at the beginning, & we understand why he goes to such lengths to learn the truth about what happened to Claudia.
It’s worth mentioning that Hawley created (and wrote a lot of) both Fargo & Legion for the FX network, & there’s a cleverness in this book that fans of those shows will recognize. It’s rare to find crisp page-turners as relevant as this one.