Review: Remembering Sarah

Chris Mooney’s third novel is a stark departure from his previous tough edged thrillers ‘Deviant Ways’ and ‘World Without End’, but it still remains a very tough read. The novel details the hidden secrets within families and the relationships that often lay submerged and invisible until a trauma unearths the truth.

This deeply moving narrative details the journey that Mike Sullivan endures after his daughter vanishes on a white snow-filled night. It is a journey that every parent dreads. Against his wife Jess’s over protective orders, Mike Sullivan takes his infant daughter Sarah sledging in a snow-filled Boston park. In the roar of the crowd on the top of the hill, and in the blink of Mike’s eye, Sarah vanishes. Sullivan is plunged into the hell that lies at the heart of this tale. Mooney carves up a huge and memorable cast that Sullivan works with and against, to try and find out what happened to his daughter, and why. In the shadows lurks a disgraced pedophile priest, Francis Jonah who was believed to have abducted and murdered two other infant girls. After loosing his cool, Sullivan has a restraining order placed upon him forbidding contact with Jonah. Jess, Sullivan’s wife deserts him, no longer able to cope with the loss while Sullivan himself tries to hold things together as his world crumbles. The police appear ineffectual and Mike Sullivan feels alone in a world that he doesn’t understand.

Several years later, Sullivan tries to get the church to help him find out the secrets that Jonah holds, because time is running out as the sinister priest is now terminally ill. Then on a snowy night, on the anniversary of Sarah’s disappearance a pink girls jacket is found on the top of the hill - where Sarah was last seen. The discovery of the jacket is linked to Jonah, but now he is close to facing his own judgment as his cancer reaches its zenith. It now looks as if Jonah will take his secrets with him to his coffin. During these dark times, Mike Sullivan never gives up hope in seeing his daughter again, as he keeps her memory fresh in his tortured mind.

Sullivan then remembers another fragment of his life, a splinter that now gnaws at him. He recalls his mother leaving when he was eight years old; he remembers her love of the church and her flight to France to escape from the boy’s violent father. Then his father reappears with information, with secrets but he needs Mikes help, but why? A violent man and a man linked to murder, Mike starts to delve into his fathers past, and that of his family, because for some reason, his daughters disappearance appears linked to that past. Mike’s father tells him things about Jess, his wife, which could be true, or the desperate lies of an old man now needing his son’s help, and a man wishing to trade secrets for atonement.

‘Remembering Sarah’ is a harrowing tale with a real emotional punch. It hits you in the stomach from page one, and then squeezes you, tears at you, as you accompany Mike Sullivan on his journey to find the truth. Despite the bleakness to the backdrop to this story, it has a real heart and never appears exploitative or sentimental for effect only. But at the core of this tale lies a message of hope, and compassion that shows that even in the blackest winter, there will always be hope, even when the grief seems totally suffocating. A highly recommended departure from thriller supremo Chris Mooney and one I expect to see high in my top ten reads of 2004. But it is a tough read - you have been warned.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Ali Karim - RAM

Book Review: Remembering Sarah