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DARK OF THE MOON
by P. J. Parrish
Pinnacle, January 2005
447 pages
$4.99
ISBN: 0786017155


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

December 1983. Louis Kincaid has returned to his home town of Black Pool, Mississippi, to be with his alcoholic, syphilitic mother during her last illness. He had been raised mostly in the north by a foster mother, and he has forgotten how people act and think in the rural south. In fact, Sheriff Dodie didn't realize that Louis was black when he hired him. Kincaid has to contend with racism and suspicion while he tries to do his job.

A hunter finds a body in the woods and he leads Louis and Junior Resnick, who has been assigned to stay close to Louis by Sheriff Dodie, to the bones. For bones they are. Bones of a teenager who apparently died at least 25 years earlier. Kincaid finds a piece of a rope under the body and some other evidence and concludes that the boy had been lynched.

The Sheriff and the mayor want to close the case. The mayor gives the bones a common name used by black people in Mississippi and plans to bury them. But Louis won't give up until he finds the real name of the victim.

DARK OF THE MOON is a reissue of the first book in the Louis Kincaid series. P J Parrish has created some memorable characters -- the woman who runs the boarding house where Louis and his mother are living, the storekeeper across the street from Louis' lodgings, the sheriff, who turns out to be stronger than his upbringing, and Kincaid himself, the half-white and half-black policeman, who only wants to do the right thing.

I don't usually go back and read earlier books in a series, but I had been so impressed with ISLAND OF BONES that I read DARK OF THE MOON when the reprint paperback edition came out. This only works if the author is sparing of spoilers. There were none in the later book.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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