Amazon.com Review
Moving from writing short stories to a novel is more than a test of endurance--it involves a daunting feat of courage as well as working a whole new set of muscles. Luckily, Alice Blanchard (whose collection
The Stuntman's Daughter won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize) has courage and muscles to spare. Her debut thriller starts on familiar turf: the transplanted big-city cop taking on the job of small-town police chief to create a better life for his family. But Nalen Storrow, who moved from Boston to the Maine community of Flowering Dogwood, hasn't found the paradise he or his family was seeking. The faded town has a rather high crime rate, including the murder of a teenage girl with Down's syndrome in 1980, which begins the book. Nalen's own teenage son, Billy, quickly hooks up with the wrong crowd--and local gossip connects him to the murder. Billy's behavior has driven a wedge between Nalen and his wife, damaging their marriage. In fact, the only family member who seems bettered by the move is daughter Rachel, who at age 9 is a smart and pretty child who idolizes her father.
Blanchard has a heaven-sent gift for summing characters up in a phrase--like the local medical examiner: "Archie was all dancing belly--a balding, fortyish indoor enthusiast who barreled toward the scene with the kind of eagerness most people reserved for sex or steak dinners...." She guides us through Nalen Storrow's disintegrating world with deceptive ease. And then she segues seamlessly into Rachel's inevitable reappearance 18 years later as a police officer in the very same town. Rachel uncovers leads to the unsolved murder of the young girl from two decades ago and also investigates a new murder. Along the way, we get wonderful helpings of poetry from Poe (including the perfect title) and from Yeats. Who could ask for anything more--except a sequel? --Dick Adler
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Switching genres with ease, short story writer Blanchard, who won the 1996 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for her collection The Stuntman's Daughter, offers an accomplished suspense novel. Flowering Dogwood, Maine, is a picturesque New England town, a seemingly safe place where people can still leave their doors unlocked. And so the community is shocked when Melissa D'Agostino, a mentally challenged teenager, is strangled on her way home from school. Chief of Police Nalen Storrow, a father of two, is particularly distressed by the killingAeven more so as he begins to suspect the killer may be someone he knows. Overwhelmed by the mounting pressures of his personal and professional life, Storrow commits suicide, and the murder case is closed, unsolved. Fast forward 18 years: Rachel Storrow has followed in her father's footsteps and joined the police force. Her life seems lonely and work obsessed; her girlfriends have long since moved away; her relationship with her awkward older brother, Billy, is distant; and her on-again, off-again lover, the current chief of police, is a married father of three. When an offhand comment from a minister leads Rachel to glance at the old D'Agostino murder files, the discovery that her brother was nearly considered a suspect sends her into an emotional spiral and convinces her to reopen the case. But her investigation is complicated by the sudden disappearance of her brother's co-worker, Claire Castillo, with whom he had fallen in love. Torn between her loyalty to her family and her duty as a cop, Rachel unwittingly finds herself confronting the same issues that troubled her father. And the answers she will find are no less disturbing. Blanchard's prose is swift and cinematic as she accelerates the suspense, and the tightly wrought ending offers a gut-wrenching, ironic twist. Agent, Wendy Weil. Rights sold in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the U.K.; movie rights to Propaganda Films. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
