Darkness Peering

Wanting to raise his family in a safer environment than big-city Boston, Nalen Storrow relocates to Flowering Dogwood, Maine, where he becomes the chief of police and his two children, Billy and Rachel, can grow up in a close-knit small town. When a young girl's body is found in a muddy creek, Storrow vows that he will find her killer but after evidence points to teen-aged Billy being involved Storrow can neither turn his boy in nor live with the consequences.

Eighteen years later Rachel Storrow has joined the FD Police Department and she reopens the unsolved murder case that was her father's last. Billy is now a teacher's aide at the local school for the blind and has begun a fledgling romance with Claire Castillo, a popular teacher at show more the school. Suddenly, Claire has gone missing and all signs point to an abduction. Once again, Billy seems to be involved and this time Rachel is determined to clear her brother's name of both past and present crimes. After three torurous weeks, Claire is found crawling out of the woods, terribly wounded but otherwise in fairly good health. She is rushed to the hospital where her father, Yale Castillo, is head of ER services. Castillo whispers to his daughter that she will be all right but she suddenly suffers devastating breathing and cardiac problems. Dr. Castillo is helpless as Claire dies right before his eyes. Shortly after this tragedy, Castillo's younger daughter, Nicole. and her boyfriend vanish without a trace. Detective Storrow is nearly overwhelmed with the caseload of solving Claire's murder and the apparent kidnapping of her sister. Did Billy have anything to do with any of this or has a serial killer begun a spree in Flowering Dogwood, one that may have started 18 years earlier?

Blanchard is a very gifted writer and this is the second of her books that I have read and enjoyed. Unfortunately it seems she has only written 3 and the last one was in 2005. The characters are very well developed and the mystery was well done always keeping the reader guessing as far as Billy's guilt or innocence is concerned. I will have to say that this is the first time I physically cringed while reading a murder mystery - that's a graphic picture that will stay in my head for awhile. Despite that, I really enjoyed this one. show less

This was done very well. It started off with her father investigating the older murder and then committing suicide when he found evidence of his son’s guilt. He loses the evidence and no one is ever prosecuted.

Then it is the present day and Rachel is a cop and Billy a teacher’s aide in the town’s school for the blind and other handicapped kids. The teacher he aides for is the first one killed. Then her sister and her sister’s boyfriend also disappear. They disappear the night that the sister, Claire, is found. The way she is found is unreal. She is nude, crawling out of the woods. Her eyes, ears and mouth have been sewn shut. One arm has also been sewn across her chest so she has to crawl on one hand. She’s been doped with show more Thorazine that is the only drug that will counteract epinephrine. Why?? Because her father is on duty at the ER and will undoubtedly misdiagnose her struggle to breath, as an asthma attack and he will give the requisite epinephrine. She dies because her father is incompetent.

Then Nicole and Dinger disappear. Because Claire was held 3 weeks before being found, Rachel turns up the heat to find the two missing kids. Especially since when they cut the sutures off Claire’s balled up fist, Nicole’s necklace (Dinger’s class ring on a chain) was inside.

It turns out to be a nearly blind and deaf owner of a dry cleaner’s store that is the killer. Rachel had interviewed him in connection with Dinger’s disappearance since he employed the teenager. Little did she know that Dinger and Nicole were 3 stories above her in a sound proofed room. The dry cleaner had been misdiagnosed by Nicole and Claire’s father when he was a baby. Instead of treating the meningitis he actually had, the doctor treated him for flu. As a result, the baby lost most of his sight and hearing and some of the use of one arm. Thus the state Claire was found in. His parents degenerated into freaks after the ‘settlement’ of $10K and the kid was abused constantly.

So that just left the old murder unsolved. Just as the rest of the police are figuring to pin it on the dry cleaner, Rachel confronts her brother. He has fit the profile all along and she harbors the same suspicion as her father. Way back then, some cats were found decapitated and hanging from trees. One of them was the murdered girl’s cat. A bell from a collar was found at the site so he knew they weren’t all strays. Billy had the bell. He decapitated the cats. And he was out joyriding with the rest of the kids who picked up the girl and teased her for a while before letting her go along a deserted stretch of road. When they found her, the friendship bracelet she always wore was missing. When Billy ran, he left it for Rachel to find in a bunch of old photos and other family memorabilia. show less

A good book about murder in a small town. The book starts off with Police Chief Nalen Storrow investigating the murder of a young mentally disabled girl. Years later, his daughter Officer Rachel Storrow investigates the abduction of another young girl. As Rachel delves into the case, questions arise about Billy's guilt now and for the past murder. This was a good, involving mystery that had me glued to the book for the better part of the novel. There were two weaknesses for me that knocked the book down one star. One was the suicide, which always disturbs me; that's a personal issue for me and shouldn't reflect badly on the book for others. The other is the character of Ozzie and his daughter Brigitte. The author went to a great deal of show more trouble to involve them in the plot, and pursued a storyline that involved the mother moving out of town and Ozzie potentially losing daily contact with his daughter. Once the main murder storyline took off this particular thread was abandoned, which annoyed me. Other than than, good story told well. show less

Detective Rachel Storrow decides to investigate a cold case from 18 years ago. In 1980 Melissa D'Agostino was found dead. Meanwhile in the present day, another female goes missing so police chief Jim McKissack and his team investigate. But will there be more bodies to discover.
An enjoyable and well-written murder mystery

very good!

Police Chief Nalen Storrow faces the unthinkable when, while investigating the shocking murder of a local teenager, he learns that his own son must be considered a suspect, in an unsolved case that has profound repercussions eighteen years later, when his daughter, Rachel, is faced with the disappearance of another young woman. Reprint.