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SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS
by Peter Blauner
Little, Brown, January 2006
400 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0316098663


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Twenty years ago, Francis X Loughlin, an NYPD homicide detective, made his reputation by getting a 17-year-old boy, Julian Vega, to confess to the murder of a young pediatrician. After all these years, the boy's conviction has been thrown out on a technicality and he's been released from prison. Soon after his release, a young woman physician is found brutally murdered in her apartment and there seem to be links between this murder and the earlier case.

Julian Vega is the logical suspect for the murder, but when Loughlin goes after him, he finds the DNA on the evidence doesn't match Julian's. To make matters more confusing, the blood under the latest victim's fingernails belongs to Allison Weiss, the woman murdered 20 years before. This turn of events forces Loughlin to reinvestigate the earlier crime and examine his own assumptions about Julian's guilt.

SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS is one powerhouse of a novel. Tightly written, full of twist and turns, this book throws new light on the relationship between the investigator and the man accused. In its way, SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS is a modern retelling of Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES, an unflinching examination of crime and punishment in urban America.

Unlike Hugo at his most pedantic, Blauner doesn't rely on cardboard stereotypes or preaching to make his points about human frailty. Instead, he gives us sharply drawn characters so real you know you would recognize them on the street. He builds his world through an accretion of familiar and realistic detail that accumulates until it is impossible for the reader to ignore the truth proffered by the story.

Julian Vega, the suspect, is not simply a very smart good kid, he's also an ex-con who is more comfortable with physical violence than polite conversation. Vega's efforts to make a place for himself in a world where no one believes in his innocence while he simultaneously grapples with the culture shock of being 20 years out of synch with the world on the outside form some of the best scenes in the book. Blauner has a way of ripping away the extraneous to reveal the pounding heart of New York City.

I have always loved Peter Blauner's work. SLOW MOTION RIOT, the book that won him an Edgar for best first novel, blew me away with its fully-realized portrait of the violence of poverty. The year I read SLOW MOTION RIOT, I gave copies to everyone I knew. This year, SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS is sure to be my go-to gift. It's the best book I've read in a long, long time.

Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, December 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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