Book Review: The Killing Moon

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

The Killing Moon     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Chuck Hogan
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Scribner January 2007

Black Falls, Massachusetts is not a town on the skids. It's a town which used to be on the skids and now is helplessly situated at the bottom, with no prospect of a way out. Danny Maddox, who grew up in Black Falls has returned to settle his mother's affairs after her death and has lingered on with a temporary assignment to the night shift on the local police force.

Almost against his will Maddox finds himself involved in a sadistic tug of war between the two brothers in control of the police force and several other residents of the town. When a charred body is found in the rubble of a fire determined to be arson, state investigators also arrive and Maddox's enigmatic presence begins to rub his local superiors as well as the state cops the wrong way. Suspicion as the murderer falls on a local misfit who has disappeared and is believed to be hiding in the nearby woods. But the opening paragraphs of the first chapter lend a level of unease to the reader, which continues throughout the tale. The final unmasking of the perpetrator caught me by surprise.

THE KILLING MOON has a very carefully constructed, intricate plot. Hogan follows up his prior novel PRINCE OF THIEVES in fine style.

Woodstock - RAM

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