Owen Keane--Atlantic City copy editor, avocational private eye, and searcher after truth--makes his fourth appearance since his Edgar-nominated debut in Deadstick (1991). After tinkering with a 20-years-later newspaper feature on a local mass murder, Owen is put in touch with the crime's sole survivor: a college student still haunted by the slaughter of her parents and siblings. He begins to interview those concerned with the unsolved crime: frustrated cops, retired and still on the job; a Mob-linked widow whose husband, now dead, was implicated in the case; an exploitative cult leader turned self-help entrepreneur; a guilt- ridden neighbor. And then there's the young reporter who recapped the case and who challenges Owen to an investigative contest that ends in a sexual encounter. Throughout the search--which eventually loses him his job--Owen ruminates on past experiences and the nature of existence with an ex-seminarian solemnity that's his trademark
(from the back)
Working for an Atlantic City newspaper, Owen Keane is intrigued by the unsolved murder of a local prominent family-even more so when the sole survivor, a baby at the time of the incident, asks him to help answer the question: Why was she spared?
With his talent for uncovering murky pasts, Owen, ex-seminarian turned seeked of lost souls, start digging. But like many truths, the one he uncovers he been distorted by the human condition-by altered indentities and secret guilt.
Now in confronting a killer, he must also face himself-and the myriad fears locked in the hearts of those trying to prove the nameless... and understand themselves.
Working for an Atlantic City newspaper, Owen Keane is intrigued by the unsolved murder of a local prominent family-even more so when the sole survivor, a baby at the time of the incident, asks him to help answer the question: Why was she spared?
With his talent for uncovering murky pasts, Owen, ex-seminarian turned seeked of lost souls, start digging. But like many truths, the one he uncovers he been distorted by the human condition-by altered indentities and secret guilt.
Now in confronting a killer, he must also face himself-and the myriad fears locked in the hearts of those trying to prove the nameless... and understand themselves.
