Thrillers That Capture the Dark Side of Small-Town Life

New York Times

2 days ago

This month's books all provide pleasingly fresh variations on a familiar theme: a troubled person's reluctant return home to confront old traumas, and possibly unsolved murders, from long ago. Whether this is a good plan (or not) is an open question.
The Ghostwriter
Olivia Dumont, the title character of THE GHOSTWRITER (Sourcebooks, 342 pp., $27.99), is still haunted by a tragedy from a generation earlier: the unsolved double murder in 1975 of her father's siblings, Poppy and Danny, in Ojai, Calif. Though her father — just 16 at the time — had an alibi, he could never escape from the rumors that he was the killer.
A half-century later, Olivia is pulled back to Ojai to help her father, whom she hasn't seen in decades, write his memoirs. It's a disturbing task. He appears ready to tell the truth, finally, about what happened on that fateful day all those years ago — but is she ready to hear it? 'There are things I never told the police,' he says, darkly.
Complicating matters is his recent diagnosis of dementia, and how his memory seems to flicker on and off. 'This illness, it's deceptive. It tricks you into thinking you have a grasp on reality, on events of the past,' he tells her, in one of his lucid moments. 'But then you find out that nothing you believed is real.'
Clark's book deftly and engagingly delves into this complicated not-so-cold case, from multiple points of view. Most affecting are a journal and some newly unearthed film footage taken by Poppy, an aspiring moviemaker and budding feminist who turns out to be the heroine of the story.
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