Review: A Simple Plan By Scott Smith

It’s a simple premise. What would happen if three men–two brothers and a friend–should stumble on a bag full of money in the woods? Stolen money, you’d have to assume, millions of dollars in non-sequential, hundred-dollar bills–enough that somebody, somewhere, has to be looking for it. Should they keep the cash? Call the police? Scott Smith immerses his characters in this moral dilemma of a situation and lets us watch as the ostensibly reasonable plan they agree on leads inevitably, inexorably, to a string of tragic consequences.

A Simple Plan is a perfect suspense novel. Smith’s protagonist, Hank Mitchell, is forever in danger of being found out. The bag of stolen money, stashed precariously under his bed, nearly throbs in the story, Tell-Tale-Heart-like, constantly in our minds as a source of potential trouble for him. Incredibly, Hank remains entirely sympathetic throughout the story. He may do some bad things, but he’s still a normal guy caught up in extraordinary circumstances. His responses, if regrettable, make perfect sense given man’s natural urge for self-preservation. Readers may insist that they would act otherwise, but Smith makes a good case for the argument that Hank really never has much of a choice.