Moretti’s tale of jealousy and obsession is nothing less than dark magic. Witchery indeed.
Crime fiction adores girls in trouble. Moretti’s latest nail-biter (The Vanishing Year, 2016, etc.) is no exception, but it is exceptional.
Alecia and Nate Winters are the golden couple of Mt. Oanoke, Pennsylvania. Nate teaches math and coaches baseball at the local high school, and Alecia takes care of their 5-year-old autistic son, Gabe. But underneath the surface, all that glitters isn’t gold. Alecia endures the daily emotional and physical bumps that come with taking care of a special needs child while Nate basks in the adoration of a town that loves him. It seems as if a thousand blackbirds falling to their deaths on the baseball field might have been a bad omen, because soon after that strange event, Nate is accused of having an affair with 18-year-old senior Lucia Hamm, of the wild, white hair and the red, red lips, and the fractures in his marriage begin to show. He insists the girl is in trouble and he was trying to help, but Alecia isn’t so sure, and the town quickly, shockingly, turns against him, immediately assuming the worst. When Lucia goes missing, all hell breaks loose. The narrative is told from the viewpoints of Nate, Alecia, Lucia, and Bridget Peterson, a fellow teacher who's a friend of the Winters' and who is one of the few who believes Nate is innocent and finds evidence that Lucia could have been the victim of an assault. Moretti explores the fierce cruelty of teenagers (they frequently call Lucia a witch) as well as the complex bonds of friendship and marriage, and she sets it all against the desperation of a dying small town. Though Moretti’s emotionally astute tale can be heart-rending, readers won’t be able to look away. As slow, creeping dread sets in, so does the inevitability of the terrible situation the town finds itself in, offering a deliciously sinister glimpse into the duplicity of small-town lives and the ease with which people turn on each other when tragedy comes calling.
Moretti’s tale of jealousy and obsession is nothing less than dark magic. Witchery indeed.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1845-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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