Surrender the Dead

October 19, 2020
When veterinarian Erin Reece finds out her estranged father is critically ill, in this uneven psychological thriller from Burley (The Quiet Child), she reluctantly leaves her practice in Colorado and drives to her hometown in northeastern Montana to visit him. The return unearths dark memories of a childhood during which 16 people vanished over a three-year span, including her own mother. When Erin learns that skeletal remains have been uncovered on her father’s farm, she’s faced with the possibility that her father is a serial killer—and that some troublesome secrets from her past may not be as buried as deeply as she thought. Distinctive characters and assured prose (“The aqueduct stretched below her, its long concrete spine like the remains of a dead animal lying in the dust”) help compensate for the nonlinear plot’s clarity and flow issues and a predictable conclusion. Burley has enough talent that readers will want to see more of his work. Agent: Paul Lucas, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

January 1, 2021
Burley's fourth novel is set in Wolf Point, Montana, a reservation-edge town haunted by a string of disappearances years ago. After Erin Reece graduated from veterinary school, she tried to put her mother's disappearance behind her, an event that initially found Erin, still a child, searching daily for her mom on the same desolate road where she vanished. When Erin is forced to return to Wolf Point because her father is seriously ill, she learns shocking new details about her parents' lives, tearing apart what she thought she knew about the man and reminding readers of the extremes that families will go to for love. Burley's understated storytelling helps highlight the sometimes-stunning psychological twists facing his characters; their italicized thoughts punctuate the tale. The ruminations are affecting, neatly revealing secrets and, most poignantly, victims' fears as they are approached and hurt by a predator. Burley's debut, The Absence of Mercy (2013), won the National Black Ribbon Award, given to an author who "brings a fresh, new voice to suspense writing." His subsequent work does not disappoint. Try this with fans of somber, psychologically driven fiction.

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