The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane Author:Laird Koenig "It was the kind of evening the little girl liked best. She stood at the window on this last night of October and looked out on the world shivering on the edge of winter. Cold wind rattled the dead flower stalks in the garden and scraped the maples' naked branches, sending the last of their dry leaves flying like torn bl... more »ack paper into the dark. Suddenly the girl pulled the curtains and closed out the night...."
Alone in the darkened house, with only a fire's glow and thirteen flickering candles for illumination, silent except for the mounting chords of a Liszt concerto. Rynn was preparing a solemn celebration. Until a knock at the door shattered sanctuary.
Rynn is the Little girl who lives in the hose at the end of the lane with her father-- or so she says. No one had seen the poet, Leslie Jacobs, for a long time, and though the pungent aroma of Gauloise filled the parlor with intimations of his presence, no one was certain he was there:
Not Mrs. Hallet, the real estate agent who'd rented the old house to the eminent English poet and his daughter and whose formidable manner, product of her impeccable Long Island lineage, brooked no betrayals, especially not from a thirteen-year-old...
Not her son, Frank, whose Halloween visit, intruding on Rynn's birthday rituals, had been more trick than treat and whose own insidious motives would soon lock them both in a perilous contest of will...
Not the local policeman who came to call and, lured by what he had seen, returned...
Not the shy young amateur magician who arrived on an errand--and stayed to become confidant and co-conspirator....
Who was the little girl who lived in such strange seclusion at the end of the leaf-swept lane? Lonely innocent seeking shelter from a hostile world? Or consummate liar? Each for his own reason, the Hallets were determined to find out. And it was that the terrible secrets of the house at the end of the lane emerged.
Moving with swift and shocking turnabout to a profoundly disturbing denouement, here is a fine and freezing novel of suspense that probes the subtle bonds of innocence to evil.« less