Murder For Revenge

Thomas H. Cook

If there have been more beautifully written books in the past three years than Thomas H. Cook’s ‘Mortal Memory’, ‘Breakheart Hill’, and ‘The Chatham School Affair’, I failed to read them. Although his early work was first rate-after all, he received Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations for Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, as well as for a true crime book, Blood Echoes, his more recent, more mature novels are truly distinguished.

It is always trite to say that a given work transcends its genre (as the Los Angeles Times has said of Cook’s work), because that is inevitably true of superior works of art. It remains, however, impossible not to say it of those books. They are mysteries, of course, in the sense that they contain crime and suspense and murder, but they are firstly poignant, elegant portraits of people and families that remain etched in the consciousness long after the covers have been closed.

The following tale, conceived almost miraculously in the midst of a conversation, offers one of the most unexpected twists you are likely to experience-a surprise ending to end surprise endings.