Orient, a novel by Christopher Bollen

Orient, a novel by Christopher Bollen, is truly atmospheric, a literary work in the guise of a thriller, that kept me completely riveted https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062329950/orient/. The novel is set on Long Island, the rural tip of the North Fork in the hamlet of Orient. It’s an area I know, though nothing as well as I’d like, and reading this book gave me the itch to visit soon.

Long Island juts out into the Atlantic and splits into two prongs for the last 30 miles or so of its 120 mile length. The North Fork, because it faces Connecticut and is surrounded by a sound and not the ocean, is less famous than the South Fork, home to the well-known “Hamptons,” with their ocean, rather than bay, beaches.

Orient has a bit of mystery to it, and Bollen exploits this for all its worth. He presents it as a land out of time, but with time catching up. In the world of the novel Orient is attracting those who a decade or two earlier would have gone to the South Fork but are priced out and looking for a more “authentic” scene.

Bollen tells the story of various locals, artists, and in particular, a sort of wayward orphan, Mills Chever, who is given a summer job and taken in by an older, single man for the summer. Beth, an Orient native and returnee from Manhattan, befriends Mills, especially when he comes under suspicion when a dead body is found. After deaths pile up and fear grips the town, the two attempt to solve the murders.

Bollen effectively creates a mounting sense of dread even as he slows the pace of the novel to give us the interiority of the characters and many scenes unrelated to solving the mystery. He’s a masterful writer, highlighting beauty, desolation, and conflicts at the intersection of money and property really effectively.

The story is gripping, the setting entrancing, but above all, read this for the prose.