UNDER A SILENT MOON
Elizabeth Haynes
Release date: April 15, 2014
Harper Collins Pub
9780062276025
Under A Silent Moon, Elizabeth Haynes’ latest book, differs from her previous novels. Her other books were more stand alone psychological thrillers than this one which can be classified as a series police procedural. What makes this novel intriguing is the way she presents the crime investigation, through the source documents.
Louisa Smith is introduced as the formidable DCI, heading the investigation of two victims. The first is a beautiful young woman brutally killed in her cottage, while the second is a suspected suicide at a nearby quarry, when her car plunged to the bottom of a pit. The investigation takes place over the course of six days where it becomes apparent that these two deaths are related.
Intertwined throughout the novel is fictional source material, including police reports, phone messages, interviews, witness statements, emails, forensic reports analysis documents, and charts. This enables the reader to feel they are part of Smith’s investigation team, collecting the clues as they attempt to solve the crime. Even the chapter titles allows for the reader to stay in the setting since they are named with the day, date, and time. However, if these document sources become a bit detailed, and they are skipped, nothing is lost in understanding the storyline.
As in all her books, Haynes has a dark side to the story with graphic sex and violence. Yet, these add to the plot as she tries to show the dark side of humanity through affairs, sexual encounters, jealousy, desire, and greed. The relationships begin to overlap and a strong theme throughout is the father/daughter relationship.
Interestingly enough is that in this book the main characters are the police, not the victims or suspects
Under A Silent Moon is much more of a plot-based book than a character based one as Haynes has written in the past. However this novel allows the reader to analyze much more as they are riveted to this gripping page-turner.
Elise Cooper
