A CRUEL LIGHT

A freelance art conservator is asked to restore the most chilling work imaginable in MacMillan’s debut.

Annora Garde has traveled the world restoring priceless artworks, but she can’t resist a call from her old sorority sister Lilith, who’s now the mayor of tiny Bliss River, Ontario. Workers converting an old Victorian house into a museum have discovered a mural inside that’s so badly damaged by moisture and mold that Annora can’t even tell whether it’s a daytime or nighttime scene. What’s really important, Lilith assures her, is that it may hold clues to the murder of Rosemary Green, the dead girl whom it depicts. Rosemary was killed in 1957, and her killer, if he’s still alive, must be in his 70s—a clue that narrows the suspect pool considerably. As she settles into a town that’s lived for many years in the shadow of its most famous citizen, late painter Kingsley Boyland, and begins to acknowledge her attraction to police Inspector Scott MacGowan, Annora, still haunted by the accident that killed her father and sisters long ago, methodically begins cleaning the mural and soon discovers that Rosemary isn’t the only dead person whose image it contains. At the same time, a new outbreak of violence, including an attempt on her own life, makes it abundantly clear that someone, whether or not it’s Rosemary’s killer, is intent on expanding the pool of victims, focusing particularly on members of The Guiding Light Project, a group of artists to whom Kingsley Boyland may have taught more than brush strokes.

For readers who like more atmospheric menace than mystery, more mystery than detection.