The Reef: A Novel

Tony Góngora is a former rock star who is no stranger to loss. He lost both a finger and a father when he was a child, and with all of the years of heavy drug use there are large chunks of his memory that are gone as well. That’s all in the past for our narrator, though, who is now working at The Pyramid, an exclusive resort on the Caribbean coast where fake kidnappings are all the rage. But unlike the kidnappings, the murder of the resort’s scuba instructor is very real and has Tony questioning everyone around him.

There is a lot of fun to be had in The Reef, but the dark humor and good satire can only get you so far. Tony is well defined and has a truly interesting back-story, but the other characters can seem flat and more stereotypical. The book does have some great writing that really helps with the sense of dread and destruction that fills most of the book, but there is a little bit of hope in the end, so you’re not left completely disillusioned with the world.