A Deadly Wandering By Matt Richtel: Chapter Summary

17 Pages and We’re Off to the Graveyard There are only two deaths in the novel A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel. Only two deaths, yet those two deaths come within the first 17 pages. That leaves the author with 360 more pages to build up the reader’s excitement and anticipation for some kind of climax. Richtel makes a bold move with this intro, but it’s a strong and prosperous move with plenty of room for further discussion. Sitting at his desk in his San Francisco house, with his two kids running around, and his wife repeatedly asking him questions, Richtel was still able to hone in his writing skills through the first two chapters to create strong imagery. Richtel’s imagery seems to be directed at creating a sense of routine for the characters in the novel. “Every morning, it was the same thing; Reggie was up and out of the house by six a.m., he’d drive the Tahoe north through town in the dark, then take a right at Valley View Drive, where things got wide open, and then accelerate up the crest into
Shortly after the accident, Richtel describes Richtel’s cruiser, “By 2006, police cars had begun to get more and more high-tech. There was a camera on the front of his car that fed video to a VCR in the trunk. In the backseat, there was a printer. It was hooked up to the laptop, a Panasonic Toughbook, which allowed the trooper to run license plates and do paperwork,” (page 24-25). This section is ironic because Richtel is probing at Reggie to see if he was using his technology at the time of the wreck, while Richtel and the rest of the police force have these elaborate computer systems set up in their police cruisers that they drive every day. Building on the situational irony, this has to go with the idea of how naïve we were and still are about the dangers of using technology while driving. If the government has purposefully placed computers inside their employees’ vehicles, then it must be safe.