Thrillers, Crimes - Fiction, Crime Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Character Types - Fiction

The Late Man

Name: The Late Man
Author: James P. Girard
ISBN: 9780451405883

by James P. Girard

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Overview

North of Wichita, Kansas, an ordinary field sits beside a narrow dirt road. An unknown, and perhaps unidentifiable, body lies there, the apparent victim - and the first in several years - of a local serial murderer. In James Preston Girard's deceptively spare yet thoroughly harrowing novel, this ugly death will draw to it three intriguing and sympathetic characters, each determined - and, we come to feel, fated - to resolve this brutal mystery. They are L. J. Loomis, a resourceful and honest detective whose life has already been soured by his pursuit of the unknown killer; Stosh Babicki, an earnest young reporter trapped in a relationship that threatens her own integrity; and the title character, Sam Haun, the night-desk man on the local paper, a man beset by grief and memory. What begins for them as an exercise of solemn procedure and by-the-book detection is transformed into a totally disorienting tale of uncertainty and fear, in which no fact and no one - whether in the glare of day on the Great Plains or the shadows of midnight - can be relied on or trusted. Already hailed by his fellow writers, James Preston Girard's The Late Man is a stunningly original and unnerving novel of suspense.

Starting with a search for a serial killer in the back woods of Kansas, The Late Man delves into the darker regions of the human spirit. Three fully realized characters become drawn into their own nightmarish worlds, where unmasking a killer's identity is but a small part of a larger obsession.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

An assured, literate writer, Girard has written a suspense novel that explores human relationships as well as the crime that brings them into focus. A Kansas college student is found murdered; the m.o. is the same as that of a known serial killer, but the police can't rule out a copycat. This grisly but conventional opening leads to a story of psychological complexity. Three people become obsessed with finding the killer: workaholic Capt. L. J. Loomis, a police detective whose ex-wife is about to move in with her sociology professor boyfriend; Sam Haun, a reporter whose wife and daughter died in a car crash; and wide-eyed young reporter Stosh Babicki. Haun learns that his dead wife was having an affair with Frank Rule, the same man who is now involved with Stosh. Haun's obsession with taking revenge on Rule nearly derails him, just as the web of deceptions and evasions among the three principals nearly derails the murder investigation. Though it lacks the suspense of a traditional thriller, this psychologically penetrating and often haunting novel carries the extra dimension of the author's empathy for his characters. It is the first for Girard under his own name; he previously wrote A Killing in Kansas , a paperback original under the pseudonym Jeffrey Tharp. (Sept.)

From Barnes & Noble

In a town north of Wichita a murder has occurred--the latest in a bloody series that has beset the area over the course of several years. In its wake, three people come together, each one determined to resolve the brutal mystery once and for all.