Tethered

After being gang-raped in high school, having a stillborn baby, and being shamed by her grandmother, the adult Clara Marsh becomes an undertaker who relates only to the dead. She's haunted by the memory of an unidentified murdered child, "Precious Doe," whose body she prepared for burial three years earlier. Another child looks to Clara for affection and is later seen in a kiddie-porn film. Narrator Rebecca Lowman adds to the gloom, reading in a soft, lackluster voice with ominous portents. Lowman's reading is flat, but MacKinnon doesn't give her much to work with. Clara is terminally depressed, and not even handsome detective Mike Sullivan can cheer her. Unrelentingly grim, without the dark humor of, say, "Six Feet Under," undertaker Clara's melodramatic miseries overwhelm the mystery. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

June 16, 2008
MacKinnon's debut offers an authentic view of an undertaker's job, but the passivity of her emotionally wounded heroinemay exasperate some readers. In Brockton,Mass., lonely Clara Marsh tends to the dead at Bartholomew Funeral Home, whose kindly owner reminds Clara of the undertaker she met as a child at her mother's funeral. When Trecie, a neglected little girl, begins hanging around the funeral parlor, Clara thinks nothing of it until a routine body pickup uncovers a stash of child pornography and Clara recognizes Trecie in a video. The ensuing investigation also points to Precious Doe, an unidentified child murdered three years earlier and whose grave Clara often visits in secret. Aided by a sensitive Irish cop, Det. Mike Sullivan, to whom she's attracted, Clara tries to unravel the mystery, even if that means confronting her own unpleasant past. Some affecting, understated prose only partially redeems the flat story line.

December 15, 2008
In MacKinnon's first novel, undertaker Clara Marsh finds herself thrust into the murder investigation of an unidentified seven-year-old girl when she discovers a shocking connection between that girl and another who's been visiting the funeral home where Clara works. The descriptive prose creates a hypnotic atmosphere, but the story starts off slowly and seemingly all over the place. Narrator Rebecca Lowman (www.rebeccalowman.comPhillip Oliver, Univ. of North Alabama Lib., Florence

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