The Blinds

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I just finished this and am not sure how to talk about it. I don't know what I can say without ruining things, so I'm just going to copy and paste from Sternbergh's page:

Welcome to Caesura, Tx, aka The Blinds, a dusty town in the Texas Panhandle cut off from the outside world and populated entirely by former criminals and witnesses put in protective custody. The twist: None of these people know who they are, because all of them have had their memories of their pasts erased. All the better to give them a fresh start and a second chance. But one thing is clear to them: If they leave the Blinds, they will end up dead.

For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace—but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town's residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her—and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway. It's simmering with violence and deception, aching heartbreak and dark betrayals.

them

Shovel Ready

Loved this from the first page, maybe I was even hooked from the cover but by the epigraphs, the pencil sketch of Caesura and the prologue Sternbergh had me captive.
The Blinds is a place where people go to forget, literally - they've had part of their memories shaved away. Are they odious criminals or innocents in the ultimate witness protection scheme? But when a murder follows a recent suicide, the relative peace of the township is threatened. Sheriff Copper and his deputies start looking into it but there's also interest from outside the complex which could blow the whole place apart.
I've read Sternbergh's Spademan novels and Cooper has a similar style - protective with a dark undercurrent. Same too is the gutteral nastiness that pops up now and again, an electric shock that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and clouds the rest of your reading. But it's worth it, because when it comes down to it we all just want to KNOW!

I will never understand how to give less than a complete stars - but this one gets 3.75. This is a well-executed speculative thriller. The book is set in Caesura, Texas, and the town itself is a social experiment where 48 convicted criminals live after having their memories of their crimes wiped out. The story is full of unexpected twists and turns, with a constant mystery surrounding the town and its inhabitants. The characters are morally gray yet relatable, each fighting for survival. While the pacing may not be as suspenseful as a typical thriller, the reveals, and multiple layers of conspiracy kept me engaged. Nothing is what it seems and I found myself grappling with rooting for morally corrupt people (they are, after all, criminals to begin with). This needs to be adapted to a mini-series, because as well as the characters are developed, it is confined to less than 400 pages and there is so much more that could have been covered.