Angels Burning

At the start of this emotionally charged novel from bestseller O’Dell (One of Us), police chief Dove Carnahan and her officers gather at a horrific crime scene in the abandoned mining town of Campbell’s Run, Pa. Stuck in a hole in the ground is the body of a teenage girl, badly burned on her upper torso, who’s later identified as 17-year-old Camio Truly. With the aid of Corporal Nolan Greely, a detective in the state police Criminal Investigations Division, Dove seeks to learn all she can about Camio from the members of the girl’s extended blue-collar family. The Trulys are uncooperative, and their distrust of Dove is all too evident. Yet Dove is determined to discover who among this apathetic and hate-filled clan may have had a motive to kill Camio. Meanwhile, Lucky, the man who decades earlier murdered Dove’s beautiful, promiscuous mother, is released from prison. O’Dell does a stellar job of depicting the despair of those who live in a blighted rural community, while providing a complex study of the human soul and the fragile line that’s crossed when someone chooses to end another person’s life. Agent: Liza Dawson, Liza Dawson Associates. (Jan.)