Without a Word

Silence speaks volumes in Benjamin's heartfelt eighth Rachel Alexander mystery (after 2004's Fall Guy), a complex portrait of a severely damaged child and her emotionally cut-off father. The Greenwich Village PI agrees to search for photograper Leon Spector's wife, Sally, who five years earlier took the dog for a walk and never came back. Sally left behind her bereft husband and daughter, Madison, a precocious child who stopped talking three days later. Leon and Madison's obvious pain draws Rachel to them. Suffering from a nervous disorder, the girl has been in therapy with Dr. Erich Bechman, who has used botox to stop her tics. When Bechman turns up dead, apparently stabbed with a syringe following one of Madison's outbursts, the police assume she's the culprit. Leon hopes against hope that Sally's return will cause the girl to speak at least enough to tell what happened. Certain that the girl is innocent, Rachel determines to track down the real killer. In the process, she gives voice to the problems of many people caught up in circumstances beyond their control, for whom only desperate measures seem the answer.