Isabella Moon » (Reprint)

Laura Benedict’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and a number of anthologies. For the past decade she has worked as a freelance book reviewer for The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan and other newspapers. She lives in southern Illinois, with her husband, Pinckney Benedict, and their two children. Isabella Moon is her first novel.

Two years ago, in idyllic Carystown, Kentucky, nine-year-old Isabella Moon disappeared on her way home from school. Is it just coincidence that Kate Russell, a young woman with no discernible past, arrived in town just months before Isabella’s disappearance? When Kate walks into Sheriff Bill Delaney’s office to tell him that Isabella’s ghost has led her to the child’s hidden grave, he immediately views her as a suspect. Mystery follows mystery as a local athlete drops dead, inexplicably, on the basketball court, and someone close to Kate is viciously murdered.

The unsolved disappearance of Isabella Moon has been the biggest disappointment of Sheriff Delaney’s career. But he senses that Kate is trouble. As he investigates her impossible claims, he also uncovers a series of unsettling truths about Carystown itself. Behind his hometown’s genteel façade is a morass of lies and murder, drugs and destruction. And Carystown’s residents are about to discover that even though the past is buried, it can rise again–with a vengeance.

Publishers Weekly

At the start of Benedict's plodding debut, Kate Russell, a recent transplant to the sleepy town of Carystown, Ky., is convinced she knows where nine-year-old Isabella Moon, who has been missing for two years, is buried. Sheriff Bill Delaney is skeptical, especially after Kate admits that Isabella herself led her to the burial site in a dream. Even Kate's only friends, Lillian Cayley and her daughter, Francie, doubt Kate's claim. But Isabella's disappearance is only one of the secrets that lurk beneath Carystown's idyllic exterior. As Kate pursues the matter on her own, Delaney digs deeper into Kate's own troubled past in South Carolina. Soon after the town's intricate web of lies and the long-buried secrets of the Birkenshaws, Carystown's richest family, come to light, Kate finds herself in a fight for her life. A predictable conclusion, underdeveloped characters and implausible subplots make for a less than satisfying thriller. (Oct.)