CBR16 Bingo – Fiasco: David and Raffi’s trip into Rattlesnake Canyon is an utter fiasco from start to finish.
When authorities find Raffi Kodikian barely alive four days after he and his best friend David Coughlin got lost in an desert canyon, they make a grim discovery. Raffi claims to have stabbed David to death in a mercy killing, but the police suspect the truth may be darker.
It was awkward on my way out of the library with this book, because another patron, intrigued by the cover, asked me what it was about, and I had to explain it was about a man who killed his best friend out of mercy – or so he claimed – when they were lost on a hike, except the controversy is that people seem to have found it quite impossible that the pair of them could get so lost in such a well-marked place, or that they could have become so desperate as that in just four days.
The poor man probably wanted to run down the stairs to get away from me, except that he was too polite for that. But he did say it sounded nightmarish and would probably keep him up at night.
Anyway, it’s odd to have discovered after reading the book that there’s not much more to the story. It’s a strange and sad case that the author presents without prejudice, but there’s no clearer answers than those we already have. That those answers are just so awful is probably why this case lingers in the collective memory.
I thought Kersten did a great job of evoking the harsh desert environment and bringing the desperation that David and Raffi felt closer to the reader, which goes a long way toward helping us sitting comfortably on our couches or trains or lunch tables at work understand why things might have gone the way they did out in Rattlesnake Canyon.
