Dark of the Moon

I don't think I can praise high enough P. J. Parrish's "Dark Of The Moon." This is the sister writing team's first novel in the Louis Kincaid series and it is very well written. I am impressed with their ability to weave historical facts into their novels to give them a realistic touch. I can't begin to imagine the amount of research that must go into their books. In addition, they have the ability to delve into the psychological meanings behind their character's actions.

Louis Kincaid is the son of a black woman and a white man who abandoned the family shortly after Louis was born. Eventually, the state took Louis and his half-siblings away from their drunken mom and Louis was placed in foster care with a family in Michigan. It's not until a friend of his mother's summons him home to Black Pool, MS, (because his mother is dying) that Louis has a chance to confront his past and its impact on the present.

Louis manages to land a job with the local police department as a detective through a phone interview so it's a bit of a shock to the department when a black man shows up. When the bones of a young man are discovered buried under a tree in a remote country location by a hunter, the locals want to bury the past along with the crimes against Negroes in the 1960's. Louis won't let it lie, though, because he feels compelled to find the answers to this long ago mystery and, in doing so, puts his life and those of others in peril. What appears to be a Ku Klux Klan "routine" hanging turns out to be much more and Louis ends up accused of murder himself. It's only with help from some unlikely sources that he's able to clear his name and solve a decades old mystery.

If you're a mystery lover, don't miss this one!

pazt