In the Dark
A Novel
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4.2 • 90 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Two young lovers. A sultry summer night. One brutal, cold-blooded murder. In this stunning, atmospheric thriller, In the Dark, Brian Freeman takes you deep into Detective Jonathan Stride's complicated past.
It's the case that has haunted Stride for thirty years. During the summer after his junior year of high school, he fell in love with beautiful Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But on the Fourth of July, the same night that Jonny and Cindy cemented their love, Cindy's older sister Laura was savagely murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but no one was ever arrested, and the case was closed.
Now, Laura's best friend Tish Verdure has returned to Duluth to write a book about Laura's death. Tish knows secrets that a lot of people would like to keep hidden, including information about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past. When a young girl is found drowned in the St. Louis River and a witness to the original murder attempts suicide, Stride realizes that the violence of the past is spilling over into the present.
As he unearths the explosive events that led to Laura's murder, Stride discovers that the ripples of her death changed everyone's lives, including his own. Can Stride put to rest the ghosts of his past, or will they devour him whole?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Edgar-finalist Freeman's fourth thriller to feature Duluth, Minn., police lieutenant Jonathan Stride (after Stalked) may be his most ambitious and accomplished work to date. As the title suggests, even those involved in the closest relationships can be kept in the dark about a loved one's past. When a woman shows up in town and informs Stride that she's writing a book about the 30-year-old mystery surrounding the murder of the older sister of the girl who grew up to become Stride's spouse, he's forced to re-examine the validity of his bond with not only his late wife, Cindy, who died of cancer five years earlier, but also that involving his current love interest, a former Vegas cop turned PI, Serena Dial. Powered by darkly poetic atmospherics and deep character development (especially Stride, whose understated intensity, dignity and resilience are emblematic of the Twin Ports area itself), this harrowing and heartrending novel will leave readers guessing until the very last pages. Author tour.
