Edward Falco’s taut literary thriller, "Wolf Point," is a mesmerizing thriller. There simply is no other word so fitting - so descriptive - with which to sum it up. So mesmerizing is this book, in fact, that putting it down, for even a brief period of time, seemed a betrayal, a denial of the hold it had taken on one’s emotions. I found myself devouring pages as though they were irresistibly disturbing sources of bookish nourishment.

Falco teaches at Virginia Tech and, I assume, he teaches writing, which is - in truth - unteachable. However, techniques can be passed along to those who have been afflicted with the need and the talent to write. Falco’s students are fortunate to have someone of his caliber able and willing to illustrate how to infuse such sparks into blazing sentences and paragraphs.

"Wolf Point’s" suspense starts on page one. Tom "T" Aloysius Walker is 57 years old, bereft of everything that once made his life a life. He has plenty of money, a pricey Rover and lots of camera gear. We find him heading away from Salem, Va., to - he’s not quite sure; heading for somewhere up North. When he comes upon two young hitchhikers, "T knew better than to stop, which is why he did, veering to the shoulder and rolling past them as the girl trotted toward him, leaving the guy to pick up his guitar case and follow."

We learn what happens solely through the eyes and ears of T. The book could have been written in the first person, with the letter "I" substituted for the not dissimilar T. To discover what made those two youngsters who they turned out to be; what shaped T’s life; what led him to be on Interstate 81, approaching Syracuse, N.Y., - all of this T will tell us. It all will unfold as though we were in the car, in a Thousand Islands cottage, on the river. That is the power of Falco’s writing.

As a student at Syracuse University, T was seduced by a much older professor who taught him many things, who read poetry to him and with whom he fell in love. Carolyn has been dead of cancer many years by the time we meet T, but she still lingers in his mind as his first love.

"Things fall apart, the center will not hold" is just one of the lines of poetry she reads to her lover/student, and the words were prescient. "Every woman he loved had abandoned him," says T - two wives, his daughter, plus a stepson, reputation. In New York, where he and his second wife were living, downloading a pornographic image from the Internet is a crime, and this led to the unraveling of T’s life, to the point where living was no longer of vital importance.

Which is why "the warning image" of the two young people he picks up didn’t deter him. He willingly and willfully opened his Rover’s doors to them, and as a result, his life changed again. That is the essence of this fascinating book, where the scent of unconsummated sex, violence, fear, tenderness and personal history mingle and meld into a story that is unforgettably vivid.

In the inevitable blurbs for "Wolf Point," Falco is compared to such masters of fiction as Raymond Carver, Richard Yates, Andres Dubus and others. Although this may come across as excessively enthusiastic, even for blurbs, there’s enough truth in some of these comparisons to evoke gratitude for Falco’s skill. Enough truth to make them valid. The author maintains the kind of suspense that leaves the reader in a constant state of flux, not knowing from one page to the next what will happen. Falco is a master not only at this, but also of language and imagery.

As surprising as the end of "Wolf Point" may be, there is a sense of inevitability, too. An unlikely full circle - a way of coping with the knowledge that while sex may not be innocent, children are. That we make our own lives, but that transformation is possible, along with an unexpected, yet fierce will to live, in spite of everything. And in learning this, Falco takes us from Salem to the Thousand Islands and then to - read the book and find out.

I had never read Edward Falco before this book, but I will look up his other works, including a recent book of stories called "Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha." Anyone on the prowl for writers with the power to move readers by virtue of a particular way of stringing one word after another might be rewarded by adding this writer to her or his collection.

Note: The author will be reading from and signing copies of "Wolf Point" at the New Dominion Book Shop on the Downtown Mall at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 25.