Voices in the Dark: 2a Novel

This slick, suspenseful thriller, the second appearance (after No Way Home ) of James Morgan, police chief of the seemingly peaceful Boston suburb of Bensington, begins with a suspicious death--and as luck would have it, a self-confessed murderer. An eccentric derelict named Dudley offhandedly tells Morgan that when he's not freezing, ``I kill kids.'' This occurs just after a teenaged boy has apparently been pushed onto the rails of the subway near the Public Garden, the second such mysterious death in three years. If Morgan believes Dudley, then he must also consider the possibility that some of Bensington's respected parents have hired Dudley to kill their children. The tramp becomes the catalyst in a seamlessly devised plot which reveals the sordid underbelly of the town where many lead lives of quiet desperation. Morgan is involved with the stepmother of the dead boy; another woman suspects that her second husband may have been responsible for the death of her daughter; a former hooker is battered by a friend's belligerent husband; adolescent step-siblings begin a sexual liaison. A somber conclusion at a private care facility involves the abandoned elders of Bensington families and underscores the long line of loneliness and dreary existence often at the core of small-town life. (Feb.)