READ

Ready? Strapped in? Go. Open to page one and begin reading. If you are lucky have someone bring you food and drink as required for you will want to stay until the end, will not want to interrupt your reading for such trivialities. Depending on your reading speed you should emerge in three or four hours filled with the excitement and awe of having spent those hours with a fully human, professional Detective, Casey Duncan, who herself is hiding a deep secret while involved in the biggest and weirdest murder case in recent times.

Place names are not too important; yet you need a Canadian map to get a sense of the vastness and remoteness of the setting. Characters are complete. Action is described in great detail with skill. Setting is important. The uncivilized forests are objective correlatives for the undiscovered parts of the human mind. The book opens in a psychiatrist’s office as Casey is trying to cope with her guilt.

Casey Duncan (Butler) is a homicide detective with a secret: when she was in college, she killed a man. She was never caught, but he was the grandson of a mobster and she knows that someday this crime will catch up to her. Casey’s best friend, Diana, is on the run from a violent, abusive ex-husband. When Diana’s husband finds her and assaults her, and then Casey herself is attacked shortly after, Casey knows it’s time for the two of them to disappear again.

Diana has heard of a town made for people like her, a town that takes in people on the run who want to shed their old lives. This is the lost city tucked away in the forest somewhere up north in Canada. You must apply to live in Rockton and if you’re accepted, it means walking away entirely from your old life, and living off the grid in the wilds of Canada: no cell phones, no Internet, no mail, no computers, very little electricity, and no way of getting in or out without the town council’s approval. As a murderer, Casey isn’t a good candidate, but she has something they want: She’s a homicide detective, and Rockton has just had its first real murder. She and Diana are in. However, soon after arriving, Casey realizes that the identity of a murderer isn’t the only secret Rockton is hiding–in fact, she starts to wonder if she and Diana might be in even more danger in Rockton than they were in their old lives.

Eric Dalton is the sheriff in the town of Rockton and he is as secretive and hidden as is the town. What secrets is the sheriff hiding? Why does he spend so much time looking out at the forest surrounding the town? “Lost”, “hidden”, “secret” are good terms for describing this novel, which was published initially as an e-serial and now as a novel.

I will say no more about plot. You have to read it. If you are a fan of detective stories you will want to read City of the Lost. If you are a fan of good fiction you will want to read City of the Lost. Like weird and creepy characters, settings and secrets? You will like City of the Lost.