The Ruins, by Scott Smith, is a captivating thriller from start to finish. Smith, also the author of A Simple Plan, seems to have an intimate understanding of psychological warfare and, fortunately, knows just how to write it. In The Ruins characters battle their own demons while at the same time battling the demons of their companions. Its a startling look at how personal desires are detrimental to group goals. If everyone is out to save his/herself, then how can a group of people survive?

Smith’s book begins with four American tourists who are, for the time being, enjoying a relatively relaxing holiday at a Mexican resort. When another vacationer, a German man named Mathias, tells the group that his brother has been missing for several days at a nearby archaeological dig, the group decides to leave the comfort of their four star hotel and venture into the jungle for an authentic Mexican experience and to help find the brother. Pablo, one of three Greek men that has been hanging out with the tourists for several days, asks to tag along (he doesn’t know any English and the group has a difficult time understanding him). He leaves a map of the archaeological site for his two Greek friends at the receptionist counter and immediately joins the fun. Hours later the group piles off of a bus and into the sunny, steamy streets of a city neighboring the dig. They then flag a taxi which drives them down an 11 mile dirt road and deep into the heart of the jungle. Apparently they will have to hike the rest of the way. Upon exiting the vehicle, the group realizes they have no way to hitch a ride back into town. Oh well, they assume, surely someone at the dig will have a car. Yes, surely. But, we all ready know that this is a horror story. So, I’m placing a $10,000 bet on the fact that everyone at the site is all ready dead and this group has no idea what they have gotten themselves into.

Indeed, the group marches for several miles, accidentally passing the path they are supposed to take, ending up in an isolated Mayan village. Of course, the tourists know Spanish - but Mayan? They ask the Mayans for directions to the dig while gnats and mosquitos hover like a mesh screen around their faces, biting at their ankles and cheeks. Apparently none of the Mayans understand English or Spanish, so the group decides to back track. With some difficulty they find the correct path to the ruins and they continue on their journey, growing increasingly weary from the hike, hungry, and dehydrated. Finally, stepping into a clearing the group comes to an abrupt halt and they survey a large hill with two tents perched atop. They’ve arrived. Unfortunately, this excitement is short lived when a man from the Mayan village approaches from the thickness of the jungle on horse back, frantically waving a gun at the tourists and begging them to leave the site (in Mayan) and turn around. I would have left right then and there. But, Smith does a good job of counteracting the irrational with the plausible. He has the characters excuse their fears of the Mayan man through various thought processes like, Maybe this is some sacred site and they don’t want us to be here, not, Maybe there is danger lurking up ahead and he is trying to warn us? So, you can understand how the tourists end up in the positions that they do. I think its part of the human fight or flight instinct to rationalize away fear and to make scary situations seem less so. When the group finally manages to make it to the top of the hill and poke around in the tents, they learn that there is a dark and menacing presence inhabiting the ruins and they must do all they can to save themselves and the others.

I must give credit to Smith for his narrative. Many passages are grusomely horrific in their detail. I found myself aching to close my eyes during several scenes because the imagery was simply too vivid. Its like watching an X Rated horror film in words. I will say there weren’t too many surprises in the text. Smith is excellent at foreshadowing, but I almost found that knowing what was going to happen made the suspense greater. It was sort of like watching a pan fall. You wait for the sound of the pan hitting the floor and you don’t want it to happen, but then it does. My chief complaint with the book is that Smith writes on an 8th grade reading level. I could have read this book when I was in middle school and never had a problem understanding the context. This makes for light and quick reading. However, one of my pet peeves is when an author uses the same word or phrase over and over again. In The Ruins the words implacable and inexorable are used so frequently I now find myself trying not to use them in casual conversation. When I say they are used frequently, I mean like every 7th page. Needless to say, The Ruins is not enjoyable because it is literary genius. It is enjoyable because the story and ideas presented within are so incredibly fascinating that I couldn’t help but get swept up. This book just proves that you don’t have to be an Ernest Hemingway to write a good story.

On another note, I was given this book before the movie arrived in theaters. (Now playing at a theater near you.) My Mother insisted that I read it because she needed “somebody to tag along” with her to the theater. She is absolutely terrified of horror movies. I finished the book on Wednesday and we went to see the film on Thursday. I’d love to give a review of the movie, but I honestly felt that the story was so deeply ingrained within my mind that I couldn’t appreciate the movie for what it was. I have no idea if it was scary or not, whether or not it was in the slightest bit understandable, or whether or not the characters even remotely resembled those in the book. This is the first time I have ever had this experience with a book which has been adapted for the silver screen. The imagery Smith provides is so extraordinary that I couldn’t let my own vision of his world vanish long enough to just “see” the movie for what it was. This is drastically different from my experience with The Da Vinci Code, where my arms were practically flailing about in the air and I was shouting things like, “NO! It didn’t happen like that.” Either Smith’s book is so amazingly vivid that its impossible to not expect the movie to be as it was, or the movie was so close to the book that I didn’t notice. (Although the plot was moved around and bits and pieces were changed here and there, the entire film remained surprisingly true to the book.) You can be sure the book is better than the movie though. There’s something about the psychology of The Ruins one could never tell in film.

P.S. Tangled Up In Blue is a song by Bob Dylan and also a metaphor for the book.