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VOICES IN THE DARK by Andrew Coburn

VOICES IN THE DARK

by Andrew Coburn

Pub Date: Feb. 10th, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93644-0
Publisher: Dutton

As usual, there's not much love lost among the couples in the bedroom community of Bensington, Mass., despite all the coupling they're doing in each other's bedrooms. Filthy-rich Paul Gunner, a onetime client of society beauty/former call-girl Phoebe Yarborough, is interested in hiring her as a birthday present for his son; Gunner's lawyer/lackey Harley Bodine has taken up with prim Regina Smith; Regina's daughter Patricia and stepson Anthony are getting it on despite Regina's frigid warnings; and, once again, police chief James Morgan (No Way Home, 1992) is on the prowl, this time for Bodine's wife Kate. When a drifter calling himself Dudley coyly hints that he killed Bodine's son Glen and, years ago, Gunner's daughter Beverly, at their parents' requests, the rift between the city fathers and Morgan—unable either to get evidence on Dudley or to dismiss his oracular charges out of hand—opens into ugly sotto voce warfare. Unsparing portraits of everybody—from grieving mother Beverly Gunner to painter Mary Williams, involved with a new man but still frantically seeking Dudley—make this new chapter of small-town passion as memorably disturbing as No Way Home.