Darkness Peering

Rachel Storrow, a detective in a small Maine police force, is following in the footsteps of her father, who was chief when he committed suicide 18 years ago. As Rachel learns more about an unsolved murder from his time, she begins to suspect her brother Billy's involvement. Pursing the investigation, Rachel begins to suspect and distrust people she has known all her life--including her brother. Patricia Kalember maintains the consistency of the characters who reappear after the shift of two decades, helping the listener make this shift in time. Her ability to evoke the essence of the characters' emotions and inner thoughts heightens the sense that these awful events are just repeating themselves. The point of view shifts often, and Kalember accommodates these changes of tone skillfully. Regional accents, though scarce, are on target. Kalember and Blanchard ratchet up the tension for a gripping conclusion. M.A.M. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

August 2, 1999
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 killing--even 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.