On the trail of a missing boy, Healy's Boston private eye John Francis Cuddy also makes it to Florida, by way of rural New Hampshire. As the story opens, Cuddy stops to help a boy and his teenage companion, Melinda, change a flat tire. They vanish into the roadside woods when a new pick-up truck, also with New Hampshire plates, pulls up.
The truck leaves but the pair's car turns up at the scene of a drowning. The dead girl resembles Melinda but her face is unrecognizable, smashed up, according to the police, by the rocks in the water. Cuddy, unconvinced, goes looking for the boy, who reminds him of a dead buddy in Vietnam.
He traces the boy's home to Elton, New Hampshire, where the taciturn police are unhelpful and the the boy's even more taciturn parents heighten Cuddy's suspicions with their spooky religious zeal. A run-in with the driver of the pick-up results in a gruesome killing in self-defense with a rather shocking aftermath. It also results in Cuddy's next lead.
Armed with false identification and an illegal gun, Cuddy heads for the Florida Keys (stopping off at the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. for a poignant visit) to investigate an evangelical religious organization where he suspects the boy is being kept.
But the heavily secured compound is open only to privileged church members. Unable to gain entrance, even by a substantial donation to the charismatic leader, and stonewalled on all sides by close-mouthed Keys denizens, Cuddy must resort to more ingenious - and dangerous - methods of penetrating the compound.
Healy's novels are seamless works of investigation, suspense, and character. Cuddy's voice is strong and individual. A man of action, whose vulnerable side is haunted by his past, his grief for his dead wife and his new love for a younger girlfriend, Cuddy pulls the reader into his life.
Passages of description integrate thoroughly with the story, giving the reader the feel of being there. The vivid plot is fleshed out with people who make their way through life on the edges of society, some by choice, some by necessity. An absorbing page-turner.
The truck leaves but the pair's car turns up at the scene of a drowning. The dead girl resembles Melinda but her face is unrecognizable, smashed up, according to the police, by the rocks in the water. Cuddy, unconvinced, goes looking for the boy, who reminds him of a dead buddy in Vietnam.
He traces the boy's home to Elton, New Hampshire, where the taciturn police are unhelpful and the the boy's even more taciturn parents heighten Cuddy's suspicions with their spooky religious zeal. A run-in with the driver of the pick-up results in a gruesome killing in self-defense with a rather shocking aftermath. It also results in Cuddy's next lead.
Armed with false identification and an illegal gun, Cuddy heads for the Florida Keys (stopping off at the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. for a poignant visit) to investigate an evangelical religious organization where he suspects the boy is being kept.
But the heavily secured compound is open only to privileged church members. Unable to gain entrance, even by a substantial donation to the charismatic leader, and stonewalled on all sides by close-mouthed Keys denizens, Cuddy must resort to more ingenious - and dangerous - methods of penetrating the compound.
Healy's novels are seamless works of investigation, suspense, and character. Cuddy's voice is strong and individual. A man of action, whose vulnerable side is haunted by his past, his grief for his dead wife and his new love for a younger girlfriend, Cuddy pulls the reader into his life.
Passages of description integrate thoroughly with the story, giving the reader the feel of being there. The vivid plot is fleshed out with people who make their way through life on the edges of society, some by choice, some by necessity. An absorbing page-turner.
