cover image Night Angel

Night Angel

Kate Green. Delacorte Press, $15.95 (282pp) ISBN 978-0-440-50102-2

The mysterious death in a boating accident of her college friend Lora brings Maggie Shea back to Haight-Ashbury after 15 years. Now a widow and hospice therapist in St. Paul, Maggie returns to California at the request of Lora's older brother, Rob, who believes his sister was killed by her husband, Dennis. In the summer of 1970, Rob, Dennis and two other men shared secrets, lovers, drugs and sorrows with Lora, Maggie and Jesseanother woman who has been out of touch for 15 years. Although the group broke up after three other students in the house died of overdoses, the survivors reunite to commemorate Lora's death. The occasion even lures Jesse, who has been living in the foothills near San Francisco and practicing a benign, artistic magic. Soon Maggie too believes Lora was murdered, but not necessarily by her husband. Dangerous remnants of the students days emerge as Maggie wakens ghosts from that Summer of Love, discovering the earlier deaths were not self-administered overdoses, and that Lora is not dead after all. Mixing magic, memory and sympathetic characters, Green ( Shattered Moon ) crafts a complex, compelling mystery. BOMC, QPBC and Mysterious Book Club alternates. (Feb.)