The Chill of Night
By James Hayman
Minotaur Books
$24.99, hardcover, 352 pages, 978-0-312-53271-0 (2010)
Fresh after the success of his 2009 novel “The Cutting,”
The novel opens with Lainie Goff, a senior associate at
It wasn’t that Lainie was such an exceptional lawyer. Her intellectual and legal skills, while formidable, ranked her no higher than half a dozen others among Palmer Miliken’s ambitious pack of associates. But in the race for the top, Lainie enjoyed a key advantage not shared by any of her eager competitors. She was not only an able lawyer, she was also an exceptionally beautiful woman with shoulder-length dark hair, a slender athletic figure, and penetrating blue eyes that most people, but men in particular, found impossible to forget. And she was sleeping with her boss.
Instead of achieving that coveted partnership, Lainie’s naked frozen body is soon discovered in the trunk of her BMW 325i parked at the end of the Portland Fish Pier. Detective McCabe quickly discovers that there is a witness to the crime: a young woman named Abby Quinn who lives on an island in
In hearing her description of the killer, Lainie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Wolfe, believes that since she’s obviously hallucinating, Abby might be off her meds. If that’s true, Abby might not have just witnessed the crime; in her troubled state of mind, she may have committed it.
Detective McCabe’s initial suspicions point to Lainie’s boss, managing partner Henry C. Ogden. In traveling from the
He headed down
McCabe and his partner discover that Lainie has left a substantial insurance policy to the Sanctuary House, a shelter for runaway kids. The facility was set up soon after public recognition of the priest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Sanctuary House is run by a controversial former Franciscan priest, John Kelly, who works with sexually abused teens. When the bishop pressured Kelly to back off in establishing the shelter, he left the priesthood instead.
In addition to
McCabe has to puzzle his way through these various suspects and Hayman does an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing the identity of the killer until the final few chapters. Although a few plot threads were left hanging, this is an engrossing novel that is filled with characters so believable that you feel like you’ve known them for years.
An absorbing plot, well-rounded characters, realistic dialogue, and skillful pacing make for another satisfying thriller from this local author.
Buy it on Amazon here.
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