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Publication Date: April 24, 2023
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 978-1639887880
List Price: $17.99 USD Trade Paperback
Page Count: 416
Audience: Adult
Distribution: Ingram
A retired small-town police chief seeks to solve a decades old murder in Boncek’s evocative mystery. It is 1955. When small-town police chief Art Moran is asked to look into the brutal murder of a young girl in Diamond City, a part of the town inhabited by an isolated mountain cult, he had no idea his life was going to change forever. Despite his inexperience, he succeeds in gaining the cult members’ trust. But things take a turn for the worse when a tragic incident changes everything. Forty years later, the ghosts of the past come back to haunt him, and he is called upon to solve the murder once again. Boncek is an excellent storyteller. The mystery is beautifully executed, and Boncek skillfully evokes the small-town atmosphere of Fosterdale; its coziness and the slower pace of life along with the pettiness and the subliminal racism that’s deeply baked into the town’s culture. Her use of local dialect adds to the novel’s authenticity. The plot unfolds at a measured pace, with relentless surprises. But what makes this novel so impressive is its close examination of grief, the way trauma affects and shapes a person, the distractions we create to deal with our inner scars, and how it’s never too late to embrace all that life has to offer. An engrossing, beautifully written mystery.
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Categories: mystery
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