Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson
Rue Dunwitty, a 29-year-old San Franciscan, has just pulled into tiny Amethyst, Tex., on one of her bittersweet hometown visits when she sees a placard in a store window that shatters her comfortable belief that nothing ever changes here.
“Have You Seen Dawn?” it reads, giving this crime thriller by part-time Berkeley resident Steven Saylor a title. Dawn Frady, it turns out, is a 17-year-old high school girl who has been missing for two weeks.
Rue doesn’t intend to get involved with the mystery, but she has little choice when she finds Dawn’s body near the cistern of the old, abandoned Dunwitty house on her father’s property. The body disappears before the cops get there, which is a harbinger of the ancient plot devices we’ll be seeing: the startling sound of a screen door banging on a dark and stormy night; mysterious lights at midnight crossing the fallow fields; the creepy old Dunwitty place; footsteps coming slowly up the stairs. This, my friends, is gothic.
I happen to like this sort of thing, and in the main it’s pretty well done here. Amethyst feels like a real town, and Rue is likeable.
She is not, however, credible. On the last page she’s in love with a man who, although we have learned he is not the killer, has such a lame explanation for all the suspicious things he’s done that I can’t imagine a woman embracing him. I keep hearing there aren’t any good single men around, but still…
This review was originally published in the San Jose Mercury Times.
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Leslie Pratch, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist from Northwestern University with an M.B.A. in Strategy and Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a B.A. in Religion from Williams College. She works with boards of directors and private equity investors to select and develop executives. She can be reached at (312) 464-7919, leslie@pratchco.com, or visit her at www.pratchco.com.
Mark Johnson is a retired book reviewer for the San Jose Mercury Times.
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