THE BLACK HOUR
Lori Rader-Day
2014
Seventh Street Books
Sociology Professor Amelia Emmet, was shot in a college hallway on campus by a student she didn’t even know. Amelia’s colleagues were more concerned about the negative effects or backfire this shooting would leave on the college’s reputation, then the brutal shooting of one of their own. Amelia upon leaving the hospital after months of recovery felt betrayed and abandoned from everyone she thought she knew. Who’s responsible for the act that actually deceived her and left her with a life changing horror? The many questions she needs answered of “Why me”, and how that left her with a cane because of a limp, and the pain medication that was just barely letting her exist doing her daily agenda. The feeling being alone, snarky comments, and the rigidness of those that came in contact with her, an everyday occurrence.
Nathan Barber a narcissistic grad student with a psychotic passion for learning about past violent histories, was Amelia’s teacher assistant. He seemed to make Amelia his own student study, a conquest of his own. Nathan’s investigating and poking around on the college campus to uncover the real truth. The story that is written will leave the reader wondering just who was Nathan exactly saving, himself from his own past, or was he really helping Amelia to get to the bottom of this mystery, so she could live her life?
This novel is an excellent plot of victimization, a survivor’s passion of hope. The novel is filled with secrets, obsessions, and a total darkness within. For what lays Amelia’s gripping strength to fight for the truth and to get back to who she was that took everything away on one horrible day.
A brilliant, mesmerizing “whodunit” page turner that will leave you in pajamas till the last page is turned.
Marie Nicoll
