Four Corners of Night
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
In his critically acclaimed novels The River Sorrow and The Last Sanctuary, Craig Holden forged a powerful, poetic vision of the American heartland. Now the writer The New York Times calls "astonishing" returns to this haunting landscape in his newest work. At once a suspenseful search for the truth in a teenage girl's abduction and a multilayered rumination on family, love, and friendship, Four Corners of Night explores bold new terrain in literary suspense fiction.
It's 9:00 A.M. in an unnamed Midwestern city. Bank Arbaugh and Mack Steiner have just come off a typical night shift--patrolling the city, scaring off prostitutes, shaking up the usual suspects. Sitting in Denny's, waiting for bacon and eggs, they get a call over the radio: A teenage girl is missing. With a glance, the two cops--best friends since childhood, as close as brothers-- know their lives have shifted off balance, because seven years before, Bank's own daughter went missing and has not been found to this day.
Two parallel stories: two girls from opposite sides of town, seven years separating them. As evidence mounts, one case begins to illuminate the other, until finally, the inevitable conclusion is revealed. Craig Holden takes us on a harrowing journey into the night, and exposes not only the heart of a tattered American city, but also of two men whose lives are intertwined in loss, envy, and love.
Stunning, haunting, and unforgettable, Four Corners of Night is a book that makes us think about friendship, the stuff of heroism, and the meaning of truth. Holden stops at nothing to ask the question: To what lengths will we go to overlook what we don't want to see?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The kidnapping of a teenage girl nearly tears apart a close friendship between a pair of cops in Holden's powerful, lyrical third novel (after The Last Sanctuary). Max Steiner is the first-person narrator, an investigator in the Personal Crimes Section of the police force who gets emotionally involved after a 12-year-old girl disappears while riding her bike in the unnamed Ohio city where he and his partner, Bank, have worked for years. The investigation seems straightforward, but the kidnapping pushes a number of hot buttons for scarred police hero Bank, whose daughter disappeared a decade ago in a similar case that was never solved. The case quickly spills over into the personal lives of both protagonists, giving Holden the opportunity to examine the problematic relationship between Max and Bank's wife, Sarah. Meanwhile, Bank distances himself from their brief involvement by resorting to a series of strong-armed tactics to locate the missing girl. The personal entanglements become even more complicated when Max's rebellious daughter disappears and his efforts to track down his own child seem to implicate several members of the department's kidnapping task force. Holden gracefully sustains narrative tension, shifting from the effort to recover the kidnapped girl to the darker, psychological effect of loss on two families. Aside from the astonishing ending, what makes Holden's latest work noteworthy is the depth of his characterizations and the assuredness with which he handles chronological leaps to develop parallel plots and subplots. Holden is an accomplished storyteller who delves deeper beneath the surface with each successive book. $100,000 ad/promo; author tour.
