Shadow House
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A young woman investigates her adventurous sister’s death in this mystery from a Shamus Award–winner who “can raise emotional bruises” (The New York Times).
Annie Honeycut is one of the country’s most daring freelance photographers, known for her willingness to risk anything for the perfect shot. Working on an assignment about a mysterious house outside Denver, the site of a string of grisly murders a century ago, Annie needs just one more picture to make it perfect: a shot of the murder room, for which she must scale the wall of the creaky old Victorian. She gets the picture, but it will be her last. Annie is found the next morning on the house’s lawn, dead with a broken neck.
After Annie’s funeral, her sister inherits the camera. As cautious and sensible as Annie was wild, Nora is nevertheless intrigued by Annie’s final picture, which shows a seemingly human shape in the corner of the room. To solve the mystery of her sister’s final moments, Nora digs into the forgotten killing spree, and a house with secrets just as dangerous today as they were a century ago.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman seeks the truth behind her sister's death in this fair-to-middling mystery focused on a small town and its secrets. Annie Honeycut dies in a night fall from the roof of the Owen Mansion in Lewiston, Colo., while on an assignment to photograph sites of old murders and scandals. After the funeral, her divorced sister Nora flies in from Iowa to settle Annie's affairs. The last shot on the film in Annie's camera indicates that someone had been near Annie when she fell. After the local police chief discounts her suggestions of foul play, Nora teams up with Annie's lover, Thomas Whitney, whom she finds disturbingly attractive, to investigate. They probe the dark secrets of the old mining town, once dominated by the Owen family, whose last member is an ancient recluse living with an elderly caretaker who had tried to prevent Annie from approaching the house. Allegretto's ( The Suitor ; the Jake Lomax series) tale is marred by one-dimensional characters and a telegraphed solution.
