Genre Fiction

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of reviews are written so that ‘‘word bites” can be ripped out of them and stuck on the covers of books and in advertising - phrases like “page turner”, “thriller”, “incisive”, “suspensful”, “kept me on the edge of my seat”, “couldn’t put it down”! That sort of hype promises a lot, but often doesn’t deliver. I guess that’s kind of a ‘duh’ observation, but I guess that kind of hype sells books.

This book has a lot of strong ingredients:

• a dead body wearing strange clothing floating off Monomoy Island off Cape Cod,

• a curious and ambitious, attractive female reporter;

• a spiteful ex-boyfriend;

• a kind, attractive, intelligent charter boat captain;

• an abandoned, ghostly town;

• spooky legends;

• an odd clutch of writers led by a well-known mystery writer with a crazy wife.

Throw all these ingredients into a book and see what happens. Yocum makes a contract with the reader to explain the body and her strange clothing. Who killed her and why? Yocum does satisfy that contract by the end.

The edge of the seat element comes from time pressure or something similar. Is the murderer going to strike again? Is there a body in the closet? What approximates that in this novel comes from the question of when (or if) the charter boat captain regains his memory and if the reporter’s bosses are going to stop being nice.

The story is the path from the body to the resolution of all the issues and the complications that get in the way of the explanations and resolutions.

Stacie Davis, the ambitious young reporter in this novel doesn’t recognize the real story until she has almost lost her mind as well as her life. I would have liked her better if she hadn’t been so ditzy. Although her bosses at the Boston Globe seem to like the stories she is writing for the paper, and they tell her to stay there, to keep digging, and to stay at a Ritzy Resort. The stories she writes seem like fluff, atmospheric pieces. She doesn’t recognize the real story until it almost kills her. Much of the drama in the novel hangs together by coincidental links.

Yocum is a strong writer with experienced writing connections including with the Boston Globe, and he lives on Cape Cod. So he knows what he’s writing about. He has a bucket of ingredients for an exciting book in a great venue. I’m not sure I understand where the title fits in the story. The dark lighthouse on the cover at sunset does have a solid role to play. It’s worth a read.