Places in the Dark

by Thomas H. Cook Narrated by George Guidall

Overview

Thomas H. Cook's novels, including Instruments of Night and Breakheart Hill, pull readers deep into their webs of obsession, passion, and fear. A best-selling author, Cook won the Edgar Award for The Chatham School Affair. In 1937, a slender young woman arrived in a small Maine town. Dora March was lovely, quiet, and mysterious. Soon the tragedies began: a house fire, a murder, a suicide. Within a year, Dora vanished, leaving behind dark, unanswered questions. But before she disappeared, the town's newspaperman was stabbed to death. Now Cal, the slain man's brother, must tear off the emotional veil clouding his judgement and find Dora March. The scenes in Places in the Dark are not graphic, but they are the stuff of nightmares. As the suspense in this haunting work increases with each chapter, it urges the listener toward a final, shocking revelation. Audie Award-winning narrator George Guidall provides the perfect vehicle for Cook's unique style.

Editorial Reviews

New York Times

[The story] is swept along by Cook's artistry, his insights into broken people, his austere imagery.

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

"Is there any schism wider or more clearly defined than that between passion and logic, heart and reason?" By the Edgar Award-winning author of Instruments of Night, this novel is a "compelling" tale of all that love ennobles, and all that it destroys. "Cook creates an intense, thought-provoking look at these seemingly incompatible ideas and the bridge one man reluctantly and painfully constructs to incorporate both into his life."

Toby Bromberg

Complex, multi-layered, and haunting, Places in the Dark is as chilling as a freezing rain, a novel that will get under your skin and stay there. This is a story that will make you a fan of Cook forever.
— Romantic Times

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

At one point in this suspense thriller a character asks, "What could be less mysterious than suffering?" Exactly. This question sums up the problem with Cook's new novel, which, like his Edgar-winning The Chatham School Affair, begins with an intriguing young woman arriving in a New England town. This time the place is Port Alma, Maine, and the woman calls herself Dora March--although we soon learn that's not her real name. As in that earlier book, the woman will have a deep and dark impact on the lives of several of the town's residents. Cook tells the story in flashbacks and sidesteps in time, beginning in 1937 with lawyer Calvin Chase's decision to give up his job as deputy district attorney to investigate the stabbing death of his beloved younger brother, Billy. Dora--the woman Billy loved--has disappeared as mysteriously as she arrived, last seen boarding a train for Portland. Unfortunately, Cook loads Cal's search for Dora with too much literary and emotional baggage, throwing out and then drawing in plot threads and jumping around in time in a manner that's sure to annoy all but the most patient readers. The narrative suffers from Dora's obvious characterization as a poster child for past child abuse, and Cal's journey from Maine to New York to California is strung out with too many jerky and misleading moves. For all his gifts as a writer, Cook has seriously overreached himself in this disappointing misfire. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Jon L. Breen

His finishing revelations meet the three-way test: they are surprising, believable, and fairly clued.
— Ellery Queen

From the Publisher

"Cook is a master of sustained suspense. This brilliant evocation of how the past infects the present ... lures readers into labyrinths of loss, guilt, and evil intent."
— Booklist (starred review)

"[The story] is swept along by Cook's artistry, his insights into broken people, his austere imagery of the barren landscapes that attract them."
— The New York Times

"Cook writes very well; his tone is sad, even foreboding, yet almost elegiac, as he weaves ... an intricate fabric of tragedy."
— The Boston Globe

Don't miss Thomas H. Cook's other award-winning works of suspense:

Instruments of Night
Evidence of Blood
The Chatham School Affair

Winners of the Edgar Award for Best Novel:

Breakheart Hill
Mortal Memory

Available wherever Bantam Books are sold and coming soon in hardcover:

Into the Web

JUN/JUL 01 - AudioFile

George Guidall truly dramatizes literature. Each mystery in Cook's puzzlebox is another surprise, and both Cook and Guidall draw the listener into more and more complex evaluations of guilt and motive. Guidall's rich voice creates dynamic characterizations. He uses his voice like a fine instrument to increase and sustain the suspense and frustration of this dark tale of intrigue and despair. S.C.A. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170528448
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	04/24/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

More than anyone I ever knew, my brother Billy felt the rapid wings of summer, how it darted like a bird through the trees of Maine, skittered along streams and ponds, then soared away, bright and gleaming, leaving us behind, shivering in coats and scarves.

It was on one of those fleeting summer days that he saved Jenny Grover's life. He'd built a wooden raft out of planks discarded by a local sawmill, packed the space between the boards with rags and mud, then asked me to help him carry it to the spot where Fox Creek widened and deepened, its current growing turbulent again just beyond the bend, where it made its headlong rush toward Linder Falls.

"I'm going to make it all the way across," he declared. He was twelve years old, shirtless, barefoot, dressed only in a pair of cut-off trousers.

"It's going to sink, Billy," I warned him. "Believe me, it's going to sink like a stone."

He laughed. "If it sinks, we'll swim."

"We? I'm not going out on that thing."

"Oh, come on, Cal."

"No," I said. "Look at me."

Unlike Billy, I was fully dressed, having made no compromise with summer beyond a pair of sandals.

"Okay then," he said. "You can go back home."

"No, I'll wait."

"Why?"

"Because someone has to pull you out of the water," I told him. "That's why I came along. To save your life."

This was not entirely a joke. Five years older, I had long ago assumed the part of the vigilant, protective brother, certain that throughout our lives I would be there to protect him. I'd already caught him as he tumbled from chairs and staircases, tugged him away from blazing hearths, snatched his fingers from closingdoors. Once I'd even managed to drag him off a rearing pony, lower him safely to the ground. My mother had scolded me for that. "He can't avoid getting hurt, Cal," she said. "Next time let him fall."

It was the sort of statement I'd come to expect from my mother, the great value she put on experience, especially painful experience.

It was not the sort of advice I cared to take, however. Nor, following it, did I in the least intend to let my brother sink into Fox Pond.

"Be careful, Billy," I cautioned as he stepped onto the raft, plunged his wooden paddle into the water, and pushed out into the current. "It's white water just around the bend."

His eyes sparkled. "You'll be sorry you didn't come with me."

"No, I won't."

"You miss all the good stuff, Cal."

I pointed to the trickle of water already seeping into his raft.

"Like drowning?"

His smile was a light aimed at the world. "Like almost drowning," he replied.
"See you on the other side, Cal."

With that, he shoved the handle against the rocky bottom again, this time with all his might, so that the raft shot forward with such force, it left a rippling wake behind it.

I watched as he floated out into the stream, then sprinted for the rickety wooden bridge that spanned it.

Billy had already made it a third of the way across the water by the time I reached the bridge. He was paddling furiously now, trying to reach the opposite bank before his inadequate make-shift raft sank beneath him. At midstream he grinned and waved to me.

"Will it make it?" I called, growing anxious now.

"Sure," he returned breathlessly, the raft still afloat but riding low in the water.

I bounded off the bridge, then along the edge of the water.

Billy was two thirds across by then, grinning, triumphant that the raft was still afloat.

"Land ho," I yelled.

He laughed for an instant, then stopped, his eyes suddenly concentrated on some point in the distance.

It was at that moment that Jenny Grover swept out from under the bridge, clinging, terror-stricken, to a black rubber tube. She was moving swiftly on currents that had not yet tamed, and which would inevitably propel her across the still-turbulent surface that lay between the bridge and the lethal, churning waters that waited just beyond the bend, water that would, within minutes, carry her over Linder Falls.

The horrible truth hit me instantly. Jenny Grover, five years old, was going to die. It was an irrefutable fact. I might dive into the water, try to intercept her, but she would have long swept past any point I might reach along her path.

There was nothing between Jenny and the falls, nothing that might grasp the rubber tube or direct it toward shore.

Nothing, that is, but my brother.

I spun around and saw that he stood in place, the paddle motionless in his hands, the raft sinking beneath him, his gaze fixed on Jenny Grover. Instantly, I knew what he was thinking.

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