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Darkness on the Edge of Town

by J. Carson Black

Darkness on the Edge of Town debut novel of J. Carson Black, published in January of 2005, and a fine debut it is. Since Ms. Black is most familiar with Arizona, where she grew up, naturally that's where she chose to place her protagonist. Darkness at the Edge of Town has all the earmarks of a more seasoned author: There's the insertion of the murderer's actions without any clue as to his actual identity, the grossness, the ritual of a serial killer, the ultimate horror of his choice of victim, the suspense, and a fine plot which delivers a solid punch at the end.

Laura Cardinal is a criminal investigator for the Arizona Department of Public Safety. As such, she's called in to a crime where a fourteen-year-old girl has been discovered dead and propped up like a doll on the stage of an otherwise empty band shell in a Bisbee, Arizona park. The local police naturally resent having to appeal to an outside agency, so Laura must deal with that as well as the case itself. Further investigation leads to the tie-in of several other similar murders. Laura is also constantly aware of the very similar type disappearance of a schoolmate almost twenty years earlier.

The Internet, and the child sexual predators who enter the chat rooms there, figure largely in the case – then it's up to Laura to connect the dots and track down the individual responsible – which provides increasing suspense when still another young girl disappears. False trails, different identities, bogus addresses and the nicknames used in the chat rooms each provide their own problems, and when Laura eventually finds her man in the end, she discovers a good deal more than she bargained for. The final chapters of Darkness at the Edge of Town are real page turners. Not a book you'll want to begin late at night, even if you're a fast reader!

We welcome J. Carson Black to the steadily lengthening list of murder-mystery authors, where there's little doubt she'll surpass many of her peers.

Alan Paul Curtis

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