cover image The Prayer of the Bone

The Prayer of the Bone

Paul Bryers. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, $23.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-58234-022-7

In a surprising departure from his last book, the comic novel In a Pigs Ear, British author Bryers delivers a remarkable mystery about two characters who are trying, futilely, to escape their past. The morning after the first snowfall of the season in Bridport, Maine, the mauled body of Maddie Ross is found near an archeological dig where excavators are researching the possible massacre by Souriquois Indians of the areas European first settlers. Maddie had been an assistant on the dig and had used the opportunity to delve into her own past as well: her mother was part Souriquois. Though the five slashes on the corpses face have everyone convinced Maddie was attacked by a bear, former Boston police detective Michael Calhoun suspects murder and begins investigating a connection to the local Native American folklore about bears. Maddies older sister, Jessica Ross, a student of ancient religions, arrives in Maine, having come from Oxford to bury her sister and take charge of the nine-year-old daughter Maddie left behind. Jessica and Michael bond over their unsettled pasts: he is disturbed by the contradictions between his perception of himself as a rational, ethical man and the moral ambiguity of his past in Boston; she resents the distance her repressed, responsible manner placed between her and her maverick sister. As the two protagonists close in on the reasons for Maddies death, shamans, shape-shifters and bear cults tinge the straightforward detective story with elements of supernatural horror. The complex characters, vivid writing and serious themes make up for a slow start. Bryer imagines a world where superstition and science intertwine until, finally, in the books chilling climax, they merge. (May)