Lost Souls FROM THE PUBLISHER
"On Halloween night in a small Midwestern town, tragedy occurs. Among the usual petty vandalism and teenage pranks, a local police officer discovers the gruesome evidence of what appears to be a hit-and-run accident. But as the investigation proceeds and the media spotlight intensifies, a much more ominous story unfolds. While the mayor and chief of police conspire to divert attention from the primary suspect - a local high school football hero whom they hope will take the town all the way to the state championship - it is left to the man who discovered the body to uncover the truth behind the cover-up." Lost Souls is a portrait of a town in decline, the leaders of a community desperate to hold it together, and a man whose anguished loneliness forces him to make startling decisions.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Part police procedural, part piercing psychological character study, Collins's latest novel revolves around a series of lurid murders that threaten the equilibrium of the unstable cop who investigates the killings, as well as the unnamed Midwestern town where they take place. The narrator is Lawrence, an erratic, disgruntled cop who finds the body of a three-year-old girl while on patrol on Halloween night. The initial investigation indicates that the girl was killed in a hit-and-run accident by high school quarterback Kyle Johnson; as the evidence begins to pile up, the police chief and mayor pressure Lawrence to help cover up Johnson's role in the crime. Lawrence goes along, but is seized by guilt and takes off on his own, keeping watch over the mother of the dead child. Then Johnson's girlfriend, Cheryl Carpenter, is found murdered soon after the child's death. As more killings ravage the town, Lawrence becomes both suspect and potential victim in a bizarre series of plot twists. Collins's style, which alternates between the clipped prose of a cop novel and some surreally introspective passages, gives the book the prose feel of a David Lynch film. Exposing the seedier elements of smalltown life, the author continues to successfully mine the same territory that got his first novel, The Keepers of Truth, shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. West Coast author tour. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Collins (The Keepers of Truth) sets his new novel in a small, decaying Indiana town on Halloween night 1984, when the cop narrator, Lawrence, finds a dead child dressed as an angel. When local football hero Kyle Johnson becomes the prime suspect, Lawrence realizes that the crime is worse than it appears. Lawrence is indebted to the mayor for not filing charges against him when he threatened his now ex-wife with a gun, so when the mayor suggests that by covering up Kyle's involvement, Lawrence would not only repay the debt but also be in line to become chief of police, Lawrence agrees. But things deteriorate as questions about a second car, the mother of the child's friends, Lawrence's own financial problems, and another death lead to more complications. The story suggests that most people are lost souls and that the town and even the country have lost theirs. A fast-paced narrative combined with strong imagery elevates this thriller to a thoughtful examination of American life; recommended.-Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Ireland's Collins (The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters, 1993; etc.) decamps to Amish country for a neatly constructed tale of murder and mayhem. The Amish, as it turns out, are but a backdrop. So, too, are the children-"little grubs in their heavy coats printed with their favorite TV characters . . . carrying lunch boxes with Scooby Doo and My Little Pony painted in bright colors"-of the little Indiana town where Collins's narrator/protagonist uneasily lives and works. Barely named throughout the course of the narrative, our hero, Lawrence, is a disaffected, divorced cop who shares the alcohol-consumption levels of a Harry Crews lead but is even more hapless. Small-town life hasn't been good to Lawrence, and from the outset the reader knows it won't be good for many other of Collins's characters, either. The trouble begins, appropriately enough, on a Halloween in the '80s, when the town's high-school football hero is placed at the scene of a grisly accident: a little girl has been run over, the driver has fled. Said hero is remorseful when the facts are made known to him, but not for the obvious reasons. Meanwhile, the town elders band together in an effort to convince officer Lawrence not to ruin the kid's future, and Lawrence almost bites at the tempting offers. Alas, he has a conscience and plenty of moral bearing, however woozy, which are troubled when other citizens of the little town-a cheerleader and a dog among them-start to turn up dead. Collins, with bows to hardboiled conventions ("By six-thirty in the morning, after a night without sleep, I had lived and died a thousand deaths, and drunk two pots of coffee"), takes his tale through elaborate twists and turns to a mostsatisfying-and most unexpected-resolution that's sure to please the most demanding mystery buff. Nicely done: relentlessly dark, unfailingly well written.
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