When I don’t see a twist coming or I can’t figure out “who done it,” I am even happier. I found just such a book in Jeffery Deaver’s The October List.

This is the first book I’ve read that begins with the climax and reads all the way through to the beginning of the story or the end of the book. Deaver is masterful and carries it off well. At one point, I flipped through to the end to see if the book actually completely read end to beginning and, when I found it did, went back to my bookmark and continued reading. What a treat!

The book cover states, “The shocking end is only the beginning…#1 bestselling author Jeffery Deaver has created the most riveting and original novel of the year, a race-against-the-clock mystery, told in reverse.”

I totally agree!

The book takes place over a three-day weekend, starting on Sunday with a frenzied investment firm office manager named Gabriela whose six-year-old daughter has been kidnapped. A relatively new friend and venture capital fund manager has left her to go deal with the kidnapper who has demanded a $500,000 ransom plus a mysterious document called the “October List.” Gabriela only knows that this list belongs to her boss who has gone missing, along with most of the firm’s money, and is being sought by the police. She has thirty hours to come up with the money and the list or she’ll never see her daughter again.

Thus begins a fast-paced drama in which each chapter moves backward in time to Friday, revealing new clues as to how the first chapter, or the end of the book, came about.

Because I read this book in one sitting, I was able to discover new clues or characters, knowing I would get more information in the next chapter. If I had stopped reading and come back to the book later, I may have had more difficulty doing this. It is, however, a short book, so one should consider reading it all in one sitting.

Jeffery Deaver is the award-winning author of three collections of short stories and 31 internationally bestselling novels, including the 2011 James Bond novel Carte Blanche. He is best known for his Lincoln Rhyme thrillers, which include the number one bestsellers The Vanished Man, The Twelfth Card and The Cold Moon, as well as The Bone Collector which was made into a feature film. The first Kathryn Dance novel, The Sleeping Doll, was published in 2007 to enormous acclaim.

The Yankton Community Library owns many of Deaver’s books in multiple formats, including the Lincoln Rhyme series and the Kathryn Dance series.