Leslie Stone, private investigator, semi-estranged mother and wife, and bearer of a dreadful secret, nearly commits a murder in the first pages of this quiet, complicated thriller by Novak (Five Mile House; Ordinary Monsters). The scene serves well as an introduction to a woman literally haunted by the past: Leslie has visions of dead children, stemming from a series of 20-year-old child molestations whose ramifications ruined her father's reputation and effectively ended her childhood. Now events further threaten her precarious mental equilibrium, as she finds herself caught up in a different string of events, which mirror the earlier abductions. Lydia, once a friend of Leslie's own 13-year old, Molly, has grown up fast and loose. Sexually knowing, popular and wild, she disappears after a party at her house and, when she finally turns up, has been sexually abused. As the case and Molly's involvement in it become murkier, Leslie is forced to confront her own past in order to refigure her relationships with the members of her family—both living and long dead. The plot moves slowly and mostly without suspense—readers will guess the secrets long before they're revealed—but the three principal female characters (Leslie, Molly and Lydia) come vividly to life. The mystery takes second place to Novak's ability to describe the complexity of female relationships and the odd mixture of innocence and knowing, of childish simplicity and difficult secrecy, that characterizes girls on the cusp of adulthood—girls who are the real focus here. Agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman. (June)
