Review: Lost Souls

Lost Souls Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Michael Collins
Class/Genre: Mystery Psychological Suspense Police Procedural
September, 2003 (UK release), A Phoenix House Book, 280 pages/£12.99

‘Lost Souls’ by Michael Collins is the perfect example of how the most beautiful and haunting prose can be created within the crime fiction genre. But, this book goes beyond genre type casting. It is a story about a small town in the Mid-West’s slow disintegration and the cost it’s willing to pay for a last gasp of air before it goes under.

Just past midnight on a Halloween night in 1984. A local cop, Lawrence, feeds his dog Max and himself after a long day. Both Max and Lawrence have a mean case of separation anxiety two years after Lawrence’s divorce. They both lead a mostly sedated day to day existence and a long weekend at a cabin in the woods may by just what they need.

But, a call arrives that destroys this apathetic existence and reveals a small fissure in their small town existence.

A three-year-old girl is missing. After putting her daughter to bed at nine o’clock, Lisa Kendell passes out on her living room couch. A cold draft awakens her to her open front door and her missing child.

Max sniffs out a pile of leaves on the street in front of the mother’s house. Pushing the leaves aside, Lawrence find the broken wings of an angel costume. The little girl had been dead for hours. Stepping back, Lawrence could see the zig zagging tire tracks that lead to the small pile of leaves. It’s obvious to him the child is the victim of a hit and run.

A witness him leads him to a trace on a pick-up scene tearing away from the crime scene. It belongs to the town’s star quarterback, Kyle Johnson. The town has pinned all its ragged hopes on the eighteen year-olds shoulders in the coming state play-offs. The mayor and the chief of police let Lawrence know, in no uncertain terms, that it would be better for everyone if the investigation led away from Kyle.

With the mayor’s bargaining chip of a past transgression to hang over Lawrence’s head and the hollow promise of a better future, Lawrence feels he has no choice to comply. When he goes to the boy’s house, he disregards all evidence pointing to Kyle. He even grants forgiveness and penance after a hasty confession from the boy.

It is Lawrence’s clinging to the carrot the mayor’s hold just out of his reach that begins the slow, insipid whirlpool that pulls all the players in. There are too many people, with too much to hide from themselves and others, to keep everything from imploding. Not wanting to see what is happening to them, everyone turns from the truth. A truth that hides in plain sight. A truth that could hurt, and yet save the lives that are left.

Only when Lawrence has emerged from the undertow for the last time, does he grasp what has really happened and that all along he had the power to do something about it.

At times ‘Lost Souls’ was painful to read and yet reading it was compulsory. Collins has a way of writing that is so fine and so subtle that you don’t notice the silken threads of plot wrapping around you tighter and tighter. A vivid and powerful first person narrative instantly involves the reader in Lawrence’s plight. And all the reader can do is read on as Lawrence stumbles in the dark, just out of reach of safety.

Collins has established his sharp, storytelling ability with ‘The Keepers of Truth’ and ‘The Resurrectionists’. His characters are like wolves that bite their own paws off to free themselves from self-made steel traps. What compels the reader to keep turning the pages is the sense of there put for the grace of God go I. And the sense that this little town, and all of it’s player’s, are waiting just beyond the county line to act out their denouement.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jennifer Jordan

Book Review: Lost Souls