Thomas H. Cook Red Leaves

Red Leaves

Thomas H. Cook

Harcourt, Jun 2006, $14.00

ISBN: 0156032341

In the burbs, Eric and Meredith Moore seem to live a happy life together raising their son Keith now a teenager. Neighbors Vincent and Karen Giordano are taking visiting family out so they ask Keith to baby-sit their eight year old daughter Amy, which he agrees to do. These are normal events in a quiet suburban setting.

However, the next morning Eric learns that Amy is missing. The police suspect Keith of foul play. Eric and Meredith insist their son is a good kid and would never harm Amy yet deep down in his gut he at least agrees with the prevailing community opinion that Keith committed an atrocity especially as the days pass, the posters fade, and his son seems different. Eric ponders DNA as his father left the family nearly bankrupt; his brother is an alcoholic; his sister is dead from a brain tumor; and finally his mother issuicidal. He begins to look deeper at Meredith wondering if her tree augments the worst from his with the culmination being they raised a teen killer.

RED LEAVES is more of a family drama than a typical thriller as the audience observes the emotional deterioration of Eric over the course of the story line. While readers will wonder what happened to Amy, Eric's darkening look at his family members make the tale as his shell of middle class trust in what he loves erodes away with every gloomy thought he makes. Thomas H. Cook writes a deep dark tale with a finale that will stun readers as behind every so called perfect family lies hidden skeletons that can consume those concealing the truth from themselves and others.

Harriet Klausner