Audrey Harte is a forensic psychologist who lives in Los Angeles and is a TV crime celebrity-expert. She returns to Maine to see her old best friend Maggie. The two women were close as young girls, and Audrey stood by her friend when she saw the girl’s father sexually abusing her.  The girls then killed Maggie’s father. The day after they reunite, Maggie turns up dead. Audrey’s short visit turns into a long stay as she can’t leave due to being a suspect and also keen to solve the crime herself. Her shared history with Maggie means that not everyone in the small town is welcoming to her. After the girls killed Maggie’s father, her brother was taken into foster care and was abused many times, and now he is a bitter alcoholic who makes repeated threats to Audrey. It turns out that Maggie had a complicated love life with many lovers, and quite a few held resentments for her behavior to them. As Audrey investigates, she revisits her past and has to face uncomfortable truths.

While Kessler’s novel does provide some information about the long term effects of childhood sexual abuse and the imprisonment of youth, that’s only a small part of this long work — the unabridged audiobook lasts 25 hours. There’s a rather tiresome love story and various other subplots which just go on forever. The story is neither educational nor gripping. Cindy Harden does a valiant job performing the unabridged audiobook, putting in plenty of energy to the reading, but this can’t transform the words. At times, the performance loses subtlety, but then so does the novel. It is a dark story dealing with serious issues, and Kessler’s treatment is heavy handed.

© 2016 Christian Perring

Christian Perring is working as an adjunct professor of philosophy in New York City in Fall 2016.