The Last Talk with Lola Faye

Written by Thomas H. Cook

Narrated by David Aaron Baker

New York Times best-selling author and Edgar Award winner Thomas H. Cook's atmospheric thrillers cut to the core of humanity's deepest fears. Here, a floundering middle-aged historian reluctantly sits down with the woman he suspects was responsible for his father's murder decades before. As they drink, they open up about this seminal event and he discovers much of what he thought to be true is anything but.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449843625

Thomas H. Cook

Thomas H. Cook is the author of twenty-three books, including The Chatham School Affair, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel, and, most recently, The Last Talk with Lola Faye.

Reviews for The Last Talk with Lola Faye

[elizabethanns_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once in I was hooked. I had so many theories. Masterfully written with little twists slowly revealing the truth.I couldn't put it down but was oh so tempted to cheat and read the last page....don't do it, just keep turning pages til you reach the end.

[rdra1962 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book really surprised me. I started reading and became sure that I knew where the story was going and what was going to happen. It felt clunky and predictable. Well, I was very mistaken! This book alternates chapters between and conversation one night and flashbacks. They mesh very well. The story changes directions and goes down a very different road. It felt like an intensely dramatic play or a movie that should be cast with actors who can handle dialogue that changes tone constantly. It often felt like one of the detective shows where the cop acts like he doesn't really know what's going on but he does, and the criminal knows he should be careful with his words but can't stop talking - it reminded me of Vincent D'Onofrio"s character from Criminal Minds...
There is a mystery involved, but the real meat of the novel is the conversation, we watch as it takes twist and turns, and when we think we know what will happen next - it usually doesn't. Fun, tense read!

[markon_305303 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a fascinating look at people's actions, motivations, and how differently people see the same event. This book was recommended by my cousin's wife. Thanks Janet!Luke, a middle-aged historian, is in St. Louis to plug his latest book. Lola Faye, the woman who worked at his father's variety store in the small town they both grew up in, shows up and wants to speak with him. They adjourn to the hotel bar and slowly start circling around the events leading up to the murder of Luke's father when he (Luke) was an adolescent. I'm not sure how Cook does it, but he manages to get the reader inside the head of both Luke & Lola Faye and we gradually begin to understand that the facts each knows about what happened may not be as close to the truth as they think.

[wankorobo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I like this ending. Very heartfull.

[katiekrug · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Do you ever pick up a book, smugly knowing exactly what to expect, and read maybe 100 or 150 pages, getting more and more frustrated because the author is taking so long to get where you know he is going, but you keep going because once he gets there you know it will be worth the wait? And then there are only 50 or so pages left, and you realize the author is not doing what you expected and you realize you probably would have enjoyed the book more had you gone in with no expectations?Such was my experience with The Last Talk with Lola Faye. I thought it would be a tight, suspenseful mystery with a big reveal at the end. About a quarter of the way in, I had already decided what that big reveal would be and how the story would resolve itself. I wasn’t totally wrong, but instead of enjoying the process of getting there, I was impatient with what I perceived to be Cook’s digressions, mis-directions, and ham-handed way of telling rather than showing. It was only in the last third of the book that I realized Cook was telling a much more subtle story, and that the suspense – the expectation by the reader of some sort of action-based denouement – was actually driven by the careful disentangling of threads.Last Talk is a dialogue between Luke, a mediocre historian and academic and Lola Faye, an old acquaintance. Years ago, tragedy struck Luke’s family and he has spent years with the ghosts of his past and his certainty about what happened. The novel switches between Luke’s recollections and his conversation with Lola Faye in a hotel bar. Slowly, everything Luke thought he understood is revealed to be based on his own assumptions and biases. What takes the place of Luke’s “truth” is a story of miscommunication, misplaced anger, and missed opportunities. The youthful Luke is a character entirely devoid of sensitivity, empathy or understanding, despite his academic brilliance. The adult Luke is a man frozen in place and numb to the world. Neither one evokes any sympathy in the reader, and the redemptive ending of Luke’s story seems a little too pat and happy.Despite these flaws, I admire how Cook deftly drew me in and shattered my assumptions and expectations of the story, just as Luke’s are during the course of one evening.

[vasquirrel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Finished this book in about two days - found myself wanting to skim ahead, not because the writing wasn't interesting, but I was DYING to know what happened next, either in the present day St. Louis hotel bar where Lola Faye and Luke convene for this "last talk" or decades ago in the small town of Glenville. A great read. Surprised I've never read anything by this author before.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What would you do to get what you want? How far would you go to make someone pay for something they purportedly did? What is the extent of human behavior? That's what Thomas H. Cook delves into in The Last Talk With Lola Faye.Once Luke's teacher, Ms. McDowell, tells him he has the potential to go to Harvard on scholarship, that's all Luke thinks of. Getting out of Glenville, AL at any cost. Unfortunately, his lofty goals of writing a stirring, emotional tribute to the every day person was never reached. Instead, he is visiting St. Louis, talking to a museum crowd about his latest dull book on fateful decisions in battle.Lola Faye Gilroy, his father's assistant at the money losing Variety Store is also in St,. Louis, there to kill two birds with one stone, see the St. Louis arch and have a last conversation with Luke. It was presumed that Lola Faye was having an affair with Luke's father, Doug. Her estranged husband, Woody, killed Doug and later himself. While the Sheriff attributed it to murder/suicide, Cook plants enough suspense and innuendo to make the reader wonder.Luke's and Lola Faye's conversation at the bar in his hotel twists and turns, flashes back to events in Glenville, makes Luke wonder about Lola Faye's motives both then and now. His writing always has this air about it...mystical, meandering, cloudy, ruminating. As the conversation advances, readers will be unsure as to who might have done what.While The Chatham School Affair, for personal reasons, will always be my favorite Cook book, this and Master of the Delta are right up there. Take every opportunity to read a Thomas H. Cook mystery.

[unkletom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic southern gothic!"The Last Talk with Lola Faye" is the fourth Thomas Cook novel I have read and he has become one of my favorite authors. The way he peels back the layers of the onion and reveals the story beneath is truly masterful. Cook's latest effort is told in the format of a hotel lounge conversation between two acquaintances from the past that, over the course of an evening, lays bare tragic events from years before that shaped the lives and identities of both. A native of Alabama, Cook spins this southern gothic tale with a skill that would make Faulkner proud. This is not the South of antebellum mansions, southern belles and mint juleps; rather it is a place of dark family secrets, angry passions, guilt and ruined lives...and it is very appealing. I highly recommend it.