Places in the Dark

Penzler Pick, March 2000: If someone held a gun to my head and told me I had to pick the single best mystery novel of the 1990s, I'd have to say Thomas H. Cook's Breakheart Hill. This magnificent decade introduced Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly to readers, neither of whom is capable of writing a bad book. George Pelecanos came along too, and Robert Crais wrote L.A. Requiem. There were novels by Elmore Leonard, Ruth Rendell, Donald E. Westlake, James Crumley, Ed McBain, and Stephen Greenleaf, along with an equal number of distinguished writers whose work raised the bar on the excellence of the literature of crime. But the book that lasts in the memory, the one that is so poetic--yet shocking--is for me Breakheart Hill, and Cook's next book, The Chatham School Affair, isn't far behind, winning the Edgar Allan Poe Award as the best book of the year.

His new one, Places in the Dark, once again takes readers into the heart of darkness in a beautiful and compelling story. Dora March, a lovely, green-eyed young woman, shows up in a small Maine seacoast village in the autumn of 1937. She steps off a bus with nothing and is soon hired by the wealthiest man in town as a housekeeper. He is old and frail and soon dies, leaving everything to her in his will. The gossips all know that she was only interested in his money, and rumors abound that she helped him along on his final journey. But she leaves the town just as suddenly and mysteriously as she arrived, having told the lawyers that she wants nothing.

Dora also affects the lives of two brothers. One falls in love with her and subsequently dies. The other believes she is responsible and sets out to find her and avenge his brother's death, becoming so obsessed with finding her that he is driven nearly mad. This unusual and haunting tale is a worthy addition to the opera of one of the bright, shining stars of contemporary American literature. --Otto Penzler