Perri O’Shaughnessy, Keeper of the Keys

Keeper of the Keys

Perri O'Shaughnessy

Delacorte, November 2006, $24.95, 336 pp.

ISBN 0385337960

Ray Jackson has withdrawn into himself, spending his nights in the basement reconstructing the places he lived in as a child. There were many of them, and his mother never gave him an explanation as to why they moved so much or when his father left them. His obsession began when his beautiful beloved wife Leigh asked him about having a child. On the night she disappeared, they had a terrible fight and he doesn't know if she is ever coming back.

He has the keys to all the places he lived as a child, and he gets into some of them, finding cassette recordings of a man threatening his mother who won't discuss the matter with him. As the days go by and Leigh doesn't contact anyone, her parents begin to wonder if he did something to her, and they report it to the police. When they question him, he lies to them, not telling them about the affair she had with his partner. Kat; a former friend of Leigh's wants to make peace with her, and helps Jackson look for Leigh, even if Kat isn't sure her husband is telling her the truth. When Ray finally learns the truth, he has a terrible decision to make, one that could either destroy him or be the making of him.

This is the first stand-alone book, apart from the Nina Reilly legal thrillers that this author team wrote, and it is a superb work of suspense. Readers don't know if Leigh is alive or dead, whether Ray killed her or caused her disappearance. Ray is an average man, content to coast along, until Kat gives him the impetus to find out what happened to Leigh. KEEPER OF THE KEYS is a tour de force with a shocking climax that will take readers by surprise.