Amazon.com Review
When Leslie Stone was 13, her father took the law into his own hands to stop the rapist he believed responsible for the abductions of young girls in the peaceful town of Swifton Woods. The Nightingales, as the girls were known, have haunted Leslie ever since then, and when her daughter Molly's best friend goes missing, their ghosts return to remind her that she cannot solve Lydia's disappearance without revisiting the crimes of her childhood. Because Molly is the only witness to the events that occurred just before Lydia disappeared, she's only one who knows that the five boys charged with sexually assaulting her friend are innocent. When Molly is called to testify, Leslie realizes that she knows who's really guilty--and may have engineered Lydia's disappearance in order to reveal a horrifying truth. Novak tells the story in several voices--Leslie's, Molly's, Lydia's, and one of the boys on trial--which, while adding emotional texture to the novel, also make it needlessly complicated. But Leslie Stone is a memorable character with complex psychological underpinnings, which are masterfully realized and compel the reader's persistence.
--Jane Adams
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Leslie Stone, private investigator, semi-estranged mother and wife, and bearer of a dreadful secret, nearly commits a murder in the first pages of this quiet, complicated thriller by Novak (Five Mile House; Ordinary Monsters). The scene serves well as an introduction to a woman literally haunted by the past: Leslie has visions of dead children, stemming from a series of 20-year-old child molestations whose ramifications ruined her father's reputation and effectively ended her childhood. Now events further threaten her precarious mental equilibrium, as she finds herself caught up in a different string of events, which mirror the earlier abductions. Lydia, once a friend of Leslie's own 13-year old, Molly, has grown up fast and loose. Sexually knowing, popular and wild, she disappears after a party at her house and, when she finally turns up, has been sexually abused. As the case and Molly's involvement in it become murkier, Leslie is forced to confront her own past in order to refigure her relationships with the members of her family-both living and long dead. The plot moves slowly and mostly without suspense-readers will guess the secrets long before they're revealed-but the three principal female characters (Leslie, Molly and Lydia) come vividly to life. The mystery takes second place to Novak's ability to describe the complexity of female relationships and the odd mixture of innocence and knowing, of childish simplicity and difficult secrecy, that characterizes girls on the cusp of adulthood-girls who are the real focus here.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
