Jennifer Patrick The Night She Died

The Night She Died

ISBN: 1569473986

Unable to cope with the death of her boyfriend in a car accident, thirty years old Lara Walton needs to escape the memories that are everywhere in Washington DC. She drives south, but her vehicle breaks down in Winston, Georgia. While waiting around, Lara sees an old fixer upper Victorian home that on the spur of the moment she buys.

Lara drops in at the local Dairy Queen where she meets teenager Sterling O'Connor, whose attitude for a seventeen year old is refreshingly punk to the outsider. She hires him to renovate her new house. Meanwhile her new neighbors Dave and Pam Grier think that the couple is having an illicit affair and he as the district attorney wants to insure propriety occurs. However, someone puts five bullets into Lara killing her. Winston police chief Jimmy Edgars investigates the murder that has two prime suspects: Sterling and record store owner Eric Teague, who desired the Washingtonian competing with the teen.

THE NIGHT SHE DIED is a strange but excellent police procedural that starts with Jimmy investigating the homicide of Lara, but is actually more of a character study that uses a murder investigation as a tool to look at the lead triangle of the victim and her two beaus. The story line is intriguing as readers learn what makes Lara tick and how the two men in her life react to her whims. Although much of the support cast fails to become much more than shadows, readers will appreciate this fine drama.

Jennifer Patrick

Soho, May 2005, $13.00, 326 pp.

Harriet Klausner