Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy.Ī novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. His spouse chafes at the role of minister’s wife and doesn’t share his faith, though “the awful grace of God,” as it manifests itself within the novel, would try the faith of the most devout believer. “Word spreads with the incomprehensibility of magic and the speed of plague.” Frank’s father, Nathan, is the town’s pastor, an aspiring lawyer until his military experience in World War II left him shaken and led him to his vocation. “In a small town, nothing is private,” he realizes. One of the novel’s pivotal mysteries concerns the gaps among what Frank experiences (as a participant and an eavesdropper), what he knows and what he thinks he knows. Was it an accident or something even more sinister? Yet, that opening fatality is something of a red herring (and that initial mystery is never really resolved), as it serves as a prelude to a series of other deaths that shake the world of Frank Drum, the 13-year-old narrator (occasionally from the perspective of his memory of these events, four decades later), his stuttering younger brother and his parents, whose marriage may well not survive these tragedies. The setting is still his native Minnesota, the tension with the region’s Indian population remains palpable and the novel begins with the discovery of a corpse, that of a young boy who was considered a little slow and whose body was found near the train trestle in the woods on the outskirts of town.
A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God.Īn award-winning author for his long-running Cork O’ Connor series (Trickster’s Point, 2012, etc.), Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a stand-alone novel that shares much with his other work.
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