Flowering Judas
A Gregor Demarkian Novel
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
"Haddam manages to produce each time a layered, richly peopled, and dryly witty book with a plot of mind-bending complexity." —Houston Chronicle on Glass Houses
Twelve years ago, Chester Morton disappeared from his hometown in Mattuck, New York, leaving no trace and never to be heard from again. For the past twelve years, his mother has kept the search for her son alive—paying for a billboard overlooking the local community college, putting up new flyers every week, hounding every law enforcement agency she can get to listen. Her determination has made his disappearance very high profile but it's also been damaging to her family, her children and to herself.
Now, Chester's body is finally found—hanging from the very billboard that has been advertising his disappearance. Chester's corpse, however, is recent—meaning that Chester had been alive, somewhere, until very recently. Under pressure and with limited resources, the local police turn to Gregor Demarkian—a former FBI agent and a frequent consultant on such cases—to try and unravel the truth buried within this very complex and tragic case and find out once and for all what really happened all those years ago.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rather than present a variety of characters with reason to want the eventual murder victim dead as she's done in recent books in this series, Edgar-finalist Haddam immediately presents the reader with a corpse in her stellar 26th mystery featuring PI Gregor Demarkian (after 2010's Wanting Sheila Dead). The body of Chester Morton, a long-missing college student, turns up in Mattatuck, N.Y., hanging from a billboard bearing his image and a request for information, part of his mother's frantic attempt to learn his fate. Called in to consult by the local police chief, Demarkian soon spots some anomalies that suggest that Morton didn't die where he was found. The discovery nearby of a backpack containing an infant's skeleton only adds to the puzzle. While the plot itself isn't one of Haddam's twistiest, the re-creation of the fishbowl that is smalltown life is pitch-perfect and shaded by a chilling glimpse of human darkness.