This author's debut is not-your-average serial killer fare. He tells his multi-layered story in three parts, skipping a few years to each sequential part. Lt. Jon Stride & his partner Maggie Bei investigate a missing teenage girl named Rachel Deese--two years after the disappearance of another teenage girl in Duluth, Minnesota. It is more than probable that Rachel has been murdered, but as the police detectives come to know more about her and her family, they realize that Rachel may very well have orchestrated the whole event out of spite.
Very realistically, the author weaves the clues throughout his narrative so that as Stride considers his evidence and conclusions, so does the reader. The main characters have depth, and his villains are not transparent. It takes over four years for all the clues to gather into a critical mass, and you believe Stride's process.
The personal lives of Freeman's detectives, victims, and witnesses add dimension to the book and are not placed as distractions or as filler. The reader comes to care about or loathe them as they warrant. The banter between Maggie and Stride, and later among them and a detective from Las Vegas, Selena, adds nice contrast to the tension that builds in the narrative regarding the brutal murders of young girls. This is a twisting, turning whodunit that never failed to surprise me. And a very impressive debut from Brian Freeman.
Leane M. Ellis, October 31, 2005.
Lucius Beebe Memorial Library
- lme.