Murder in Maine: The Fly Man Murders

The audaciously constructed second Murder in Maine novel (after 2006's The Avenging of Nevah Wright) falls considerably short of its apparent goals. Any of the three narrators would be difficult to carry off successfully: Dilly, a three-year-old child who finds himself inexplicably abandoned and has to cope not only without an adult but with a killer hunting for him; Faith, a homeless amnesiac whose memory returns only in tantalizing wisps that fuel an increasing sense of urgency; and Skip, a horribly abused boy growing up at the mercy of an unloving mother and a sadistic father. Their rather confusing jumble of stories and chronologies is only partially clarified by a bewildering and banal confluence of concluding events. Davis, who won the 1949 Edgar Award for best first novel, published a dozen books before going on hiatus in 1977. Her re-emergence with her daughter (Katherine) and grandson (Ren) as co-authors so far appears to be a faded postscript to her earlier career.