Crime & Mystery
Red Leaves sits in that awkward little borderland between campus novel and mystery, which is probably why it works so well. The death mystery gives it a spine, but it’s the atmosphere that sticks.
A lot of books can manage one or the other. Fewer bother with the uneasy in-between, where the setting keeps getting under your skin even when the plot is doing its best to behave like a crime novel. That’s the more interesting territory, usually.
A lot of books can manage one or the other. Fewer bother with the uneasy in-between, where the setting keeps getting under your skin even when the plot is doing its best to behave like a crime novel. That’s the more interesting territory, usually.
That uneasy middle is usually where I’m most willing to follow a book. If the mystery is too neat, the campus just becomes wallpaper. If the campus texture is strong enough, though, it can make the whole thing feel more unsettling than a standard crime setup. A setting with a bit of intellectual rot in it tends to linger.