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THE 37TH HOUR
by Jodi Compton
Delacorte Press, December 2003
336 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0385337132


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

While, at first glance, there appear to be many sites on the net in which Jodi Compton is featured, few of them give a great deal of information about this novice author. I did, however, glean a few worthwhile nuggets of information -- that Sarah Pribek, the detective protagonist of this longer tale, saw her genesis in a novella containing overtones of the supernatural and, importantly, that the author was once a copy editor. This latter, no doubt, accounts for the tightness of her prose and the lack of superfluous description and (dare I say?) general waffle extraneous to the plot.

Detective Sarah Pribek specialises in finding missing persons. Chapter one deals with her successful -- and near tragic -- recovery of a teenage runaway. She finds the girl about to jump from a bridge into the Mississippi River and attempts to talk her off the bridge but the girl jumps nonetheless. Establishing Sarah's bravery -- if foolhardiness -- the author has her heroine jump into the river in order to save the teenager. Compton admits that the scene was included in order to illustrate Pribek's character from the outset but the scene was one of the most research-intensive of the entire book.

Sarah's husband of only two months, Mike Shiloh, has been accepted for training as an FBI agent at Quantico. This is his last weekend at home but he urges Sarah to travel out of town in order to comfort -- and attempt to bring back to the local sheriff's office -- her partner Genevieve Genevieve is on leave. Her 14-year-old daughter, Kamareia, had been raped and murdered by a man who, because of Sarah's compassionate thoughtlessness, had not been convicted. Genevieve does not blame Sarah for the murderer's escape from his just punishment, but she is obsessed with the man and his activities.

Pribek accedes to Shiloh's wishes and promises to be home in time to take him to the airport when he leaves for Virginia. She is unsuccessful in her attempts to rehabilitate Genevieve but she does arrive home in time to drive Shiloh -- but discovers he has left. She is angry at Shiloh for his apparent cavalier treatment of her but anger turns to alarm when a phone call from Virginia establishes that her husband has not arrived.

Sarah takes leave in order to investigate as there are no detectives with her experience in locating missing people. She is able to distance her personal feelings -- most of the time -- and treat her husband's disappearance as just a case. She tracks down Michael's family in an attempt to get inside his mind and establish reasons for his disappearance and, finally, succeeds.

As a first novel, this book is a great success. The author shows remarkable insight into human relationships and behaviours. Her characters are, as she herself admits, deeply flawed. After all, the relationship between Sarah and Shiloh came about because of (or perhaps in spite of) a one night stand. To my mind that would not be a firm basis for trust. Wouldn't there always be room for the thought 'If he did that with me, what is to stop him....?' Perhaps this is the author's intention. There is a glancing touch on religion as well as sexuality. There are certainly extremely violent acts portrayed but -- for which I am grateful -- there is no dwelling on the violence. Nor, for that matter, is there a graphic depiction of the sex within the book. The success of the narrative is witness to the lack of necessity for such graphic portrayals!

The author is already working on a second novel in a Pribek series. I trust its release will not be delayed.

Reviewed by Denise Wels Pickles, January 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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