Wicked Peace Book

Many writers have attempted to emulate the icy cold, precise prose of Patricia Highsmith--usually with limited success. Whether or not this was Gay Longworth's intention in the highly accomplished Wicked Peace, it certainly has all the hallmarks of the American mistress of the genre: balanced and trenchant character building, idiosyncratic and fastidious plotting, and--most of all--a compulsive readability with no interruptions. Journalist Cat Torrant is driving home chuckling over the revelations of a feisty, elderly interviewee when she accidentally runs over a dog that dashes in front of her car. When she attempts to find the owner's house, the nightmare begins: opening a garage door, she finds the dead body of a young girl, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. Cat is filled with the painful regret of not being there sooner, but soon feels a deeper kind when the dead girl's family refuses to accept Cat's story and blames her for the death. They see her as a murderer and are prepared to go to any lengths to ensure the delivery of a very final justice. The only way that Cat can prove her innocence is by finding the killer. But her investigations soon open a nasty can of worms--was her murder absolutely inevitable? Longworth may be using the classic structure of the wrongly accused forced to track down the culprits, but she injects this with a freshness and style that ensures a commanding and hard-edged read:Cat was on the ground, coughing, disorientated, as a cloud of exhaust fumes enveloped her. With a hand over her mouth, she scrambled away from the smoke now billowing out of the open garage door. She couldn't see the offending exhaust pipe, but she could hear the engine still churning out its deadly fumes . . . Images flashed through Cat's mind. No mess. No loose ends. No one around. No life.--Barry ForshawRead More