cover image Grace Point

Grace Point

Anne D. LeClaire. Viking Books, $22 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-670-84327-5

Set in a fictional seaside village, this insipid romantic suspense novel weaves together the disparate lives and times of Zoe Barlow and Rosalina Santos. Zoe is a mother of two whose existence is turned upside-down when she discovers the skeletal remains of four babies in the attic of her house. Rosalina, whose story takes place 50 years earlier, shocks her Portuguese community by leaving her devoted husband for an artist with the appropriately soap-opera-ish name of Fenris Boak. When Zoe's infant son disappears, the tales interlock to reveal secrets about the two women and the town of Grace Point. LeClaire ( Land's End ) peppers her prose with references to phantoms and ghosts in apparent hopes of sending shivers up the spine. Unfortunately, her characters are as insubstantial as the netherworld she invokes. Despite the mounting number of dead bodies and Rosalina's affair, few moments of passion and few thrills are offered here. (Aug.)