An improbable tale slow to gather momentum, but darkly powerful in the end—a welcome recovery from the obscurantism of The...
Another of Cook’s retrospective strolls down Murder Lane begins with an apparently chance encounter at a typically dreary book signing.
Twenty years after escaping his family’s home and the convenience store in Glenville, Ala., Prof. Martin Lucas Paige looks back on a life that’s brought him moderate professional success as a Harvard-trained historian but not a single enduring human relationship. He abandoned his high-school sweetheart Roxanne because she was too ordinary for the grand future he envisioned; his wife Julia divorced him when she realized that he’d always be a stranger to her; and his parents died years ago, his father shot to death, his mother felled by a wasting illness soon thereafter. Now Luke’s past confronts him with a jolt in the person of Lola Faye Gilroy, the store clerk whose estranged husband Woody, maddened by her affair with Luke’s father, had killed Doug Paige. At first baffled and affronted by Lola Faye’s request that he sign a copy of his new book for her (what should he write? he wonders: “Nice seeing you in Saint Louis”?), Luke joins her for a drink that turns into an endless colloquy, an insinuating interrogation by his late father’s mistress that reveals layers of illusion and self-deception and ends by turning his world upside-down by forcing him to acknowledge just how high-priced his Harvard degree was.
An improbable tale slow to gather momentum, but darkly powerful in the end—a welcome recovery from the obscurantism of The Fate of Katherine Carr (2009).Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-101407-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
A chilling story set under a blistering sun, this fine debut will keep readers on edge and awake long past bedtime.
A mystery that starts with a sad homecoming quickly turns into a nail-biting thriller about family, friends, and forensic accounting.
Federal agent Aaron Falk is called back to his rural Australian hometown for the funeral of his best friend, Luke, who apparently committed suicide after killing his wife and 6-year-old son; he’s also called to reckon with his own past. Falk and his father were run out of town when he was accused of killing his girlfriend. Luke gave him an alibi, but more than one person in town knows he was lying. When Luke’s parents ask Falk to find the truth, long-buried secrets begin to surface. Debut author Harper plots this novel with laser precision, keeping suspects in play while dropping in flashbacks that offer readers a full understanding of what really happened. The setting adds layers of meaning. Kiewarra is suffering an epic drought, and Luke’s suicide could easily be explained by the failure of his farm. The risk of wildfire, especially in a broken community rife with poverty and alcoholism, keeps nerves strung taut. Falk's focus as an investigator is on following the money; nobody in town really understands his job, but his phone number turns up on a scrap of paper belonging to Luke’s late wife, a woman he’d never met. The question throughout is whether Luke’s death is something a CSI of spreadsheets can unravel or if it’s a matter of bad blood from times past finally having reached the boiling point. Falk struggles to separate the two and let his own old grudges go. A fellow investigator chastises him: “You’re staring so hard at the past that it’s blinding you.”
A chilling story set under a blistering sun, this fine debut will keep readers on edge and awake long past bedtime.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-10560-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.
A Seattle homicide detective is thrust back into a painfully personal case when the remains of her 20-years-vanished younger sister are uncovered in a shallow grave near Cedar Grove, the Washington mountain town where they grew up.
Forty-two-year-old Tracy Crosswhite has long felt responsible for what happened the night her goofy, fun-loving sister, Sarah, disappeared. Former lawyer Dugoni (The Conviction, 2012, etc.) retells the events of that evening in flashback, recounting how, upon leaving a shooting championship, Tracy asked Sarah to drive her truck back to Cedar Grove during a storm so Tracy and her boyfriend could make it to their romantic dinner reservation. The next morning, the empty truck was discovered on a county road with Sarah nowhere to be found, and her disappearance turned both the Crosswhite family and the town itself upside down. As Tracy's engagement fell apart and her parents lost themselves to grief, Tracy found herself doubting the legality of the trial that eventually put local oddball Edmund House in prison for Sarah's apparent murder. Now, with the fresh evidence of her sister's remains in her arsenal, Tracy seizes the opportunity to reinvestigate Sarah's fate—and the possible conspiracy she believes led a man to get convicted for a crime he didn't commit. The majority of the book centers on Tracy's quest to uncover the truth and secure a new trial for House. Though the book is well-written and its classic premise is sure to absorb legal-thriller fans, it grows a bit plodding at times, with too many pages dedicated to House's retrial.
Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4778-2557-0
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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