Tom Piccirilli, The Midnight Road

The Midnight Road

Tom Piccirilli

Bantam, July 2007, $6.99

ISBN: 0553384082

Flynn works for Suffolk County Child Protective Services, and an anonymous tip has him heading to the Shephard house, where he sees Kelly playing in the snow with her dog Zero. They enter the home, where Flynn meets high strung Mrs. Shephard, who shows him her house and declares she can care for Kelly very well, as there is not a mark on her. Flynn gets set to leave when he hears singing, so he heads to the basement where the voice seems to come from. There he finds a man all scarred up in a cage big enough for a German Shepard.

Mr. Shephard says he made the call, but his wife shoots him. She goes after Flynn who gets away from her in his 1966 Charger, but falls into an icy river. He is underneath for twenty-eight minutes when he is rescued, and miraculously resuscitated by the paramedics. While in the hospital, Zero who was in Flynn's car when it went through the ice appears and talks to him. In the aftermath of his near death experience, someone starts killing people around him, one who he knew pretty well. Flynn needs to learn who is taunting him and trying to kill him, or die trying.

THE MIDNIGHT ROAD is an amazing thriller that shines a spotlight on the hidden dark corners of the human psyche. Tom Piccirilli creates a complex lead character, who knows he is losing his grip on sanity, yet also believes someone is terrifying him to drive him further over the edge. The protagonist is a refreshing protagonist mentally crippled (he knows Zero is a talking hallucination), yet must move on. Readers will finish this gripping Noir in one tense sitting.