Prized Possessions
Murder in a Small Town
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
A "stunning mystery" in the Edgar Award–winning series that launched Fox TV and Hulu's Murder in a Small Town—"the ending is a real killer" (The New York Times).
"[Wright] can keep up with the best crime writers—even the Ruth Rendells and the P.D. Jameses." —Toronto Sun
In this masterpiece of psychological suspense, the real villain is self‑delusion; it inflicts more damage than even the craziest serial‑killer. In the case of Emma O'Brea, the delusions concern her marriage: When her husband Charlie disappears it quickly becomes apparent that Emma was the only person in Canada who didn't recognize how desperate he had been to leave.
Then there's Eddie Addison, an overgrown delivery boy, far from the sharpest knife in the drawer, and dangerously obsessed with a pretty young student. Eddie and Emma would seem to have little in common, but when Inspector Karl Alberg is called in to solve the riddle of Charlie's vanishing act, the two sets of disturbing delusions begin to converge, with a climax that even the canniest reader is unlikely to see coming.
"Wright is fully [Ruth Rendell's] equal in psychological studies of compulsion, and this is one of her finest." —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Forsaking the procedural leanings of her earlier novels featuring Vancouver, B.C., Staff Sgt. Karl Alberg, Wright ( Fall from Grace ) here traces two resonating plots of psychological dysfunction, criss-crossing them in the final sections to grim and unforgettable effect. Emma O'Brea wakens to find her husband Charlie pointing a gun at her head. A year passes. Charlie vanishes in a carefully rehearsed manner and Emma hires Alberg to make a freelance search. The sergeant, facing his 50s and his growing attachment to his lover Cassandra, finds out there may be more behind Charlie's disappearance than the man's simply being a cad. Meanwhile, across town, a young man named Eddie delivering groceries to Melanie, a college girl, loses his temper at her alleged insult. Depicting Eddie as none-too-bright, impulsive and crude, Wright also renders him sympathetic as the youth manages an apology; but angered anew at Melanie's lack of response, Eddie takes his woes to a friend who helps him plan revenge. Expertly bringing both plots into collision, Wright serves up justice in a swift and unexpected fashion.
