Amazon.com Review
The protagonists of Craig Holden's poetic, intricate, and challenging novels are complex individuals whose many dimensions are revealed so painstakingly that when their deepest secrets are finally uncovered, the reader is likely to whisper a satisfying "aha!" and experience a closure that is secondary to the solution of the mysteries at the heart of the plot. Like his previous novels, this one is a meditation on friendship, love, and the meaning of family, as two men, both of them police detectives, undertake a search for a missing teenager. Mack and Bank have been down this route before--7 years ago, when Bank's own daughter disappeared in a case still marked "unsolved" in the police files of the unnamed Midwest city where the novel is set. The parallels between her disappearance and Tamara Shipley's abduction aren't immediately obvious, but first Mack and then Bank begin to suspect a connection. As the search for Tamara bolsters the link between a murdered Catholic priest who knew her family and a shadowy organization called the Sisters of Compassion, which operates a kind of underground railroad for young abuse victims, evidence points to a hidden motive for what might not have been a kidnapping after all. And when Mack's own difficult teenage daughter goes missing, his search for Naomi uncovers even more disturbing connections between Tamara Shipley's disappearance and the decade-old abduction of his partner's child. The denouement doesn't wrap up all the loose ends--that's not Holden's style. In fact, it raises more questions than it answers. But those questions, and the characters who pose them, will linger in the reader's mind long after the details of the plot have faded from memory.
--Jane Adams
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The kidnapping of a teenage girl nearly tears apart a close friendship between a pair of cops in Holden's powerful, lyrical third novel (after The Last Sanctuary). Max Steiner is the first-person narrator, an investigator in the Personal Crimes Section of the police force who gets emotionally involved after a 12-year-old girl disappears while riding her bike in the unnamed Ohio city where he and his partner, Bank, have worked for years. The investigation seems straightforward, but the kidnapping pushes a number of hot buttons for scarred police hero Bank, whose daughter disappeared a decade ago in a similar case that was never solved. The case quickly spills over into the personal lives of both protagonists, giving Holden the opportunity to examine the problematic relationship between Max and Bank's wife, Sarah. Meanwhile, Bank distances himself from their brief involvement by resorting to a series of strong-armed tactics to locate the missing girl. The personal entanglements become even more complicated when Max's rebellious daughter disappears and his efforts to track down his own child seem to implicate several members of the department's kidnapping task force. Holden gracefully sustains narrative tension, shifting from the effort to recover the kidnapped girl to the darker, psychological effect of loss on two families. Aside from the astonishing ending, what makes Holden's latest work noteworthy is the depth of his characterizations and the assuredness with which he handles chronological leaps to develop parallel plots and subplots. Holden is an accomplished storyteller who delves deeper beneath the surface with each successive book. $100,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
