Yeah, baby. A step by step descent into a very private hell. Four stars from me. This was a hundred per cent better than most thrillers & crime fiction I ever read because it didn’t ask you to suspend any one tiny part of your disbelief, there were no outrageous circumstances, no floridly crazed villains, no coincidences, no corpse that did not follow on logically from the corpse before it. Scott Smith comes up with a felicitous phrase to describe what I mean on page 237:It had the disorderl...

I finished A Simple Plan a few days ago, and here I am sitting at work, eating a Lara Bar on my lunch break, and I’m still thinking about it. I hope to watch the movie tonight so I can just get all of this Simple Plan stuff out of my system. The book, not the cheesy pop punk band. The plan is simple, and the story itself is pretty simple, too. Two brothers and a friend find a wrecked plane with a whole bunch of money inside so they decide to take the money, wait six months, and then split it all...

Scott B. Smith has written only two novels, published 13 years apart. I’ve given them both 5 stars. He works within specific genres. His novel The Ruins is horror; this book is a crime thriller. And yet both books are so well-written, so smart and feature so much psychological depth that it does them a disservice to call them anything but great literature. He’s that rare literary writer who keeps you turning pages. A Simple Plan has a simple premise. Three men – accountant Hank, his unemployed b...

If a poll were taken, I wonder how many of us could confirm that they had passed tests of honesty.  You know those little tests.  A twenty dollar bill found laying about somewhere and you know who left it there,  A found wallet, fat with cash or a purse left sitting on a display table while you were shopping.  I remember finding a twenty dollar bill laying in the ditch, when I was just a kid.  Of course I gave it to my parents, not even fully aware yet of the real value of my find.  I’m sure the...

I love bookmarks. My favorites are color postcards, or airline boarding passes I hold onto. I have no problem using these to mark my place in a book and pick up with it the next day or the days after. The exception to this are books like A Simple Plan, the debut novel by Scott B. Smith that I stayed up until 3:05 a.m. on a Saturday night/ Sunday morning to finish. I had to. Published in 1993, its premise is not new and one that many have asked ourselves: If you found millions of dollars in cash,...

Hank and Jacob Mitchell and Jacob's friend Lloyd find a crashed plane in the woods. The pilot is dead but he has a duffel bag with 4.4 million dollars in it. The three men agree to sit on the money until they're sure no one is looking for it. But can they keep their mouthes shut? And what will happen when someone talks?A Simple Plan is the story of three men in a difficult situation that quickly escalates into violence. The underlying theme seems to be how one lie inevitably leads to one more.Th...

I'm sorry I thought that I'd written a review for this one. I loved this book and everything Smith writes. This is the story of how values and morals can devolve to the lowest levels of humanity when a great deal of money is involved. The writing craft is excellent. Smith starts off first by endearing the characters to the reader and then slowly step by step takes them down the wrong path. It is so masterfully done that I was cheering for them even when they were doing the most heinous acts. In ...

I am selling this piece back to the used bookstore I got it from--pronto. *SPOILERS*I will cut right to it. This is a book with an interesting idea, fascinating plot, but is ruined by characters who are loathesome, less sympathetic than any I have read in my life, and who do absolutely nothing believable. And not only that but I don't believe that any of these crimes could be played out and go over without a hitch the way we are supposed to believe they did, so even from a technical standpoint I...

I find it hilarious whenever I see negative reviews for this book and almost all the time, the reason for the negativity is that the reviewer thought that the main characters were stupid and made dumb decisions. If characters always made the right decisions or the smartest ones, there would be absolutely no drama and why the hell would anyone want to read about people who do all the right things?!I think this was a wonderful story about how all of us are capable of terrible things if circumstanc...

When it comes to Scott B. Smith it’s a good thing we got the quality because the quantity is on the low side with only The Ruins released since this one came out in 1993. Hank Mitchell is a regular guy living in rural Ohio with his pregnant wife Sarah and a steady job as an accountant at a feed store. He isn’t close to his brother Jacob who is a high school dropout that spends most of his time drunk when not scrounging out a living. One of the few times they interact is their regular New Year’s ...