Discovering the Body: A Novel [Hardcover]

Mary Howard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2000

Discovering the Body is a gripping novel filled with psychological suspense, sensitivity, and emotional complexity. With this stunning debut, Mary Howard has crafted an electrifying and hauntingly evocative novel of truth and perception, of the ties we tell others-and the lies we tell ourselves.

Two years ago Linda Garbo left her graphic design job in Minneapolis to open a printmaking studio in a small town in Iowa with the encouragement of Luci Cole, a weaver and an old friend from art school. Arriving in Linden Grove for good, Linda agrees to stay with Luci and her boyfriend, Charlie, in their old farmhouse outside of town until the renovations to her new studio space are completed. But the following afternoon as she is driving down the long winding road toward Luci's house, Linda sees Luci's neighbor, Peter Garvey, walking out the front door-and when Linda enters the house a few minutes later, she discovers her friend's lifeless body on the kitchen floor.

Now, two years later, Peter Garvey has been convicted of Luci's murder. Linda is married to Charlie and living in the very house where Luci died. And she is convinced someone is following her. As she begins to confront her fears-approaching the man she believes is spying on her, visiting Peter Garvey in prison-she finally faces the cause for her frequent panic attacks: she was too traumatized by her discovery of Luci's body to be a reliable witness. And if she's identified the wrong man, the killer may still be close by, ready to react if she admits she might have made a mistake. Compelled to unravel the mystery surrounding Luci's final days, Linda finds that Luci was a master at weaving her true colors into a complex tapestry, preferring involvements that required secrecy.

A beautifully crafted tour de force of significant depth, passion, and power, Discovering the Body is a completely beguiling meditation on perception, loss, memory, and redemption whose conclusion proves to be as significantly haunting as it is satisfying.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Memory is powerful. Memory is treacherous. These are the twin horns of Linda Garbo's dilemma. Two years after finding Luci Cole's body, two years after her testimony helped convict Peter Garvey, Luci's lover, of murder, Linda is haunted by the fear that her remembrance of that fatal day was flawed. Linda had arrived in Linden Grove, a tiny Iowa town, to start her own graphic design business and to be close to Luci, an old friend from art school. But Luci's death sent Linda's life spinning into eerie tangents: she married Charlie, Luci's boyfriend, lived in the house Charlie built for Luci, kept Luci's workroom as a shrine to her. She is, she thinks, happy. But at what price has she bought that happiness?

As half-formed memories wash over her, Linda becomes determined to illuminate the context of Luci's death. Her decision, she knows, will disturb Charlie: "I wonder if I have set in motion a series of deceptions that will end with my losing him to Luci." Finding Luci's diary raises more questions than it answers, plunging Linda into a web of partial truths and outright deceptions that bind the small town together.

Howard's first novel is an elegant mystery in name and deed, unwinding, like Luci's loom, methodically back to origins and causes. It is also an equally elegant exploration of the ease with which such beginnings elude us. The novel calls into question the nature of individual and communal memory, of history as created art, of art as the transmission of desire. For Linda, the carefully etched image of the house she shares with Charlie (a birthday present, a gesture of apology for the turbulence her guilt has unleashed) is a metaphor for the dizzying coincidence of time, memory, and clarity: "If I can't bring life into the composition, I'm going to have to start over. Lower your brush, I tell myself, given a push by memory. Step up to the door full of sky, throw yourself onto the air. Suddenly I feel, rather than see, that the lines of the composition have gathered around this empty space all along, like rays of light. Lower your brush."

Howard has lowered her own brush--and raised the bar in the arena of smoothly crafted suspense prose. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly

Don't expect the unexpected from this soap operatic suspense novel about a smalltown Iowa murder witness who marries the victim's bereaved lover. From the first page, when a puddle of spilled tomato juice reminds Linda Garbo of the day she discovered Luci Cole's slashed body, heavy foreshadowing and familiar themes choke this sultry drama. When Linda, a printmaker and graphic designer, first moves to Linden Grove, she stays with her old art school friend Luci and Luci's lover, beekeeper Charlie Carpenter. Luci's brutal murder soon after throws Linda and Charlie together, and a year later they marry. Two years after the trial, in which their neighbor Peter Garvey was convicted, Linda and Charlie are struggling to forget the horrible crime (difficult since they live in the house where the murder occurred). John Bender, a local reporter who believes in Garvey's innocence, persuades Linda to meet Garvey. The prisoner, who has previously admitted that he was Luci's spurned lover, tells Linda that Luci kept a secret journal. Although Charlie assures Linda that no diary exists, Linda finds her friend's writings in the margins of an art book. They detail Luci's self-destructive flirtations, including one with a religious counselor aroused by her confessions. Linda also uncovers the secrets of a troubled teenager, local drug traffickers, a blackmailer and, of course, her own husband. First-time novelist Howard nicely captures the essence of rural Iowa, the work of beekeeping and the art of etching. Dialogue between Linda and the reporter has an understated Midwestern charm. Unfortunately, Howard's evident determination to create a bestseller by cramming her novel full of daytime television concernsAdeep sexual psychology, childhood trauma, male villains and triumphant heroinesAproves as fatal and obvious as Luci's misguided affairs. Regional author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (September 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688171567
• ISBN-13: 978-0688171568
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,643,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well-paced and haunting, October 7, 2002

By 

"melissadec" (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Discovering the Body: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is much better than a typical murder mystery, offering not only suspense but also a nuanced portrait of the grief and fear that follow a murder. Howard's novel takes a lot of surprising twists and turns, yet always remains plausible. The main character, Linda, is an interesting heroine; she is neither damsel in distress nor crime expert. Thankfully, the book doesn't get bogged down in macabre details like so many recent mysteries, but the threat of danger throughout the novel was enough to make me keep the light on all night.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine novel, thrilling mystery, February 24, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Discovering the Body: A Novel (Hardcover)

I couldn't stop reading Discovering the Body until I had finished it -- at three in the morning! I was taken in at once by the tensions among the characters -- by Linda Garbo's self doubt about her role as a murder witness and her certainty that there was someone "out there" observing her, waiting for her to make a false move. I was even more intrigued by her relationship with the murder victim Luci Cole. The two women had a bond based on Luci's need to depend on Linda and Linda's need to be needed, but their friendship had not gone very deep until it was too late. Remembering Luci, Linda comes to see how she failed her in many ways and may even have precipitated her murder. Luci's journal, like those of Anaas Nin, is an enigmatic blend of truth-telling and invention. The journal may or may not reveal the truth about Luci's life during the days before she died, and Linda's eagerness to treat the journal entries as if they were testimony add to the suspense as she closes in on the person she thinks is the killer. Linda realizes as the story unfolds that she has barely seen beneath the surfaces of most of the people around her. Luci was surely more complex, more troubled, than Linda had ever realized. Other townspeople, too, are barely appreciated by Linda until she starts investigating Luci's murder. Judy is Linda's opposite in many ways, a good friend against whom Linda can play off her suspicions. Other characters are equally well developed: Charlie, John Bender, Tess, Bill Allard. The minister, Reverend Gus, is an especially interesting character. One of Howard's strengths is dialog which reveals much more than characters realize they are giving away. I didn't see the ending coming at all, and found it very satisfying -- complicated and absolutely earned by all the detail that preceded it. All in all, this is a fine novel.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars carefully crafted, November 28, 2000

By 

Karen Sampson Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson" (Reno, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Discovering the Body: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mary Howard's thoughtful mystery, "Discovering the Body", is carefully crafted and requires the reader to pay close attention. The narrator, Linda, is an artist who notices lines, colors, details. She is remarkably observant about outer details, but is uninformed, even naive, about inner details, about the emotional component of situations, about the true feelings of people. In these pages, we follow her inward journey as she learns more about the people of her small Iowa town. In the process she learns more about herself and how she is perceived by others. As Howard's tale unfolds, some mysteries are revealed. Other matters are left ambiguous. Howard's book, in the style of Ruth Rendell, makes demands on the reader: Some "facts" must be inferred, and other surprising facts must be assimiliated into the general plot. "Discovering the Body" is not a quick, toss-away pleasure, but it offers satisfaction to the patient reader.