Edgar-winner Thomas H. Cook writes some of the most poignant mystery novels around. Once again there is a small town, hints of an unspeakable crime in the past, a grieving and solitary protagonist and, most of all, there is Cook's brooding, darkly elegaic prose. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
Many great writers keep on writing what is essentially the same book.
It's the variations within the form that fascinate. Such is the case with Places in the Dark . Unusually this is a story of two brothers, Cal cool and rational, Billy fiery and impulsive. Both fall for the spectral green-eyed Dora March. Dora arrives one autumn, her past carefully guarded, and gradually insinuates herself into the life of Port Alma, a small town in Maine.