The Devil and the River
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
When the rains came they found the girl's face. Just her face. At least that was how it appeared...
From the Richard & Judy Book Club-selected author of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS.
On a summer evening in 1954, 16-year-old Nancy Denton walked into the woods of her hometown of Whytesburg, Mississippi. She was never seen again.
Two decades on, Sheriff John Gaines witnesses a harrowing discovery. A body has been unearthed from the riverbank, perfectly preserved, yet bearing evidence of a brutal ritualistic killing. Nancy has come home at last.
Already haunted by his experiences in Vietnam, Gaines must now find out what really happened to the beautiful and vivacious Nancy. As he closes in on the truth, Gaines is forced to not only confront his own demons, but to unearth secrets that have long remained hidden. And that truth, so much darker than he could ever have imagined, may be the one thing that finally destroys him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This tepid thriller from Ellory (A Dark and Broken Heart) presents an original way of mutilating a corpse but follows a familiar story line. In 1974, Sheriff John Gaines of Whytesburg, Miss., who has recently regained some balance after "the nine circles of hell that was the war in Vietnam," is stunned when the body of a teenage girl is unearthed from the mud. The victim's heart was removed, and a basket containing a snake swallowing its own tail was inserted in the chest cavity. The coroner identifies her as Nancy Denton, a local who vanished 20 years earlier, her features preserved by the mud in which she was buried. Gaines's search for the murderer necessarily reopens old wounds and, predictably, yields indications that Nancy's killer has claimed other lives. Ellory, who overlays the whodunit with heavy-handed references to the effect military service in Vietnam has had on his characters' psyches, has been more creative and subtle in the past. Readers will hope for a return to form next time.
