A tale of corruption with an ending you really can’t guess; it’s mesmerising stuff. The story starts slowly but then becomes faster and faster, real edge-of-the-seat stuff. As it builds through unexpected turns, the characters gain depth and a fantastic thriller ensues. Lots of action, moral issues, the effect of guilt (or the lack of it) and small town frustrations (Maine) make up one of the best first novels we’ve read. This was first published in 2004 and it won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey award for best first crime novel and has been, quite rightly, republished. A must-read.
Nothing much happens in Versailles, Maine. Until a body is found in a cabin up by the lake. The dead man turns out to be from the Boston DA’s office, a prosecutor who had been investigating a series of gang-related murders in that city. Ben Truman, Chief of Police, heads down to Boston to follow the few fragile leads he has in the case. Not welcomed by the police there, he knows he really should get the message and disappear back to the sticks. Big city crime is way beyond anything he's ever dealt with before.
But still Truman refuses to let it go. With the help of a retired cop who knows all the angles, he becomes embroiled in an investigation which has its roots in a sequence of deaths which began twenty years previously…
William Landay was an assistant district attorney before he turned to writing. He is the author of two previous novels, Mission Flats and The Strangler. He lives in Boston with his family.
