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PETER STRAUB is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Two of his most recent, Lost Boy Lost Girl and In the Night Room, are winners of the Bram Stoker Award. He lives in New York City.

MYSTERY.  Tom Pasmore, ten years old, survives a near fatal accident.  During his long recovery, he becomes obsessed with an unsolved murder and finds he has clues to solving it that he shouldn’t.  Lamont von Heilitz has spent his life solving mysteries, until he wanted to know nothing more of the terror of life and the horror of death.  When a new murder disrupts their world of wealth, power, and pleasure, the two must form an unlikely partnership to confront demons from the past and the dark secrets that still haunt the present.

Publishers Weekly

In a meaty tribute to mystery sub-genres, Straub ( Ghost Story ) serves up a coming-of-age tale, a country-manor murder mystery and a twisted knot of governmental corruption and cover-up. Ten-year-old Tom Pasmore, a rich resident of the Caribbean island of Mill Walk, is hit by a car and, in a near-death experience, sees visions of himself in the future. During his long recuperation, Tom reads mystery stories brought to him by Lamont von Heilitz, an eccentric neighbor, once a famous detective. Action resumes when Tom, now aged 17 and possessed of sharpened deductive skills, gives the police an anonymous tip to help them solve the murder of a government official's sister. Tom's tip backfires, motivating him to join Lamont in trying to solve a murder that took place 20 years earlier in the Wisconsin resort town where Mill Walk's privileged citizens spend their summers. That layered, complex case reveals a long history of corruption, leads to more murders, to realization of the meaning of Tom's early visions and his discovery of his true identity. While evocative of place and time (the early '60s) and peopled with memorable characters, the story tries to fit into too many subgenres to succeed completely at any one. $200,000 ad/promo. (Jan.)