Dark Time
The 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson” saved 150 airline passengers from almost certain death, making instant heroes out of the captain who landed the crippled jetliner in an icy river and the crew that guided every passenger to safety.
But for Martin Wilkes, whose wife Keira and two sons were on that flight, the miracle has a hollow ending: although the boys return, no one can locate their mother. Keira Wilkes has survived, only to disappear.
The ensuing search takes the husband from his comfortable home on the Connecticut gold coast to a bleak and inhospitable wilderness and forces him to confront the validity of everything he believes in.
Absolute Truth
Brutal murders on successive nights have shocked the small town of Drayton. In their aftermath two young women are dead, anguished families confront a staggering loss, and residents face
face the possibility that a serial killer lives among them.
To Brianna Cooper, a reporter for the Drayton Courier, even such horrific crimes would ordinarily mean little more than an assignment; but because the first victim was a friend, Brianna feels a greater personal involvement. Unfortunately, her reputation as a journalist is spotty at best: she cuts corners when it suits her, and at least once has embarrassed herself and the Courier with her nonchalant approach and indifferent attitude.
Brianna Cooper believes she can do better—can gather facts and verify sources, seek the truth and report it,and play her role with a new independence. She doesn’t realize that simply doing her job right may have consequences she could never have anticipated, and that the absolute truth can present its own dangers.
Flood Moon
Northward
Francis McNally, the PI first introduced in Dark Time is back, is headed for Nunavut, that cold expanse of Canada north of Quebec and south of the Pole, in a novel that centers on its people, their mythology, and their traditions.
Though the circumstances differ greatly from his 2009 assignment in which he eschewed going there, he is still driven by the perceived failure of that previous attempt. Though semi-retired, he believes that his skills and expertise will get him through, but he’s unprepared for the spirituality of the Inuit community and the role mythology plays in their everyday lives.
With a critical issue at home complicating his situation further, McNally must somehow compartmentalize the issues, find the missing person, reconcile his own skepticism with the prevailing spirituality, and return to the wife who encouraged him to take this one last case.
Thirty-one Seconds
On a picture-perfect afternoon in 1979, Chicago businessman Louis Blaine boards a DC-10 for a flight to Los Angeles. It's just a day trip: he plans to be home around midnight to his pregnant wife and his seven-year-old daughter.
But thirty-one seconds after the plane becomes airborne, it falls from the sky. Engorged with jet fuel, the wide-body plane slams into the ground and explodes a mile from the airport. The earth quivers—the smoke is visible for miles—a few unfortunate people on the ground are killed—everyone aboard the DC-10 is dead.
The picture-perfect day had become a gruesome nightmare, one from which no one in the family would ever awaken. But forty years later, the unborn son, Daniel, who has no idea how to make things right, decides to try anyway. He doesn't face the dangers of a doomed plane, but he finds danger he could never have foreseen.
Once more into the Arctic for Francis McNally—a now-semi-retired private investigator—this time to honor the passing of a friend, Auguste Demarais, who had worked some magic (or miracles) for Mac and to whom the PI says plainly, "I owe you everything."
This time around he convinces his wife Linnie to accompany him—she will remain in Toronto with a friend while Mac continues north, sees to Demarais's remembrance, and then rejoins her for a short vacation. When he arrives Baker Lake, however, he finds the town in turmoil: a murder remains unsolved, a popular schoolteacher has disappeared, and an aggressive and bigoted nationalism has sprung up in the predominantly Inuit community.
Mac may be cutting back, but he finds a connecting thread quickly. Under ordinary circumstances, he would sign on and get to work, but his wife is waiting for him, and the events in Baker Lake are being supplanted by fear of some new virus that, according to scientists, will kill millions and shut down the world.
Amidst all this, McNally picks up some quick history lessons, learning of the horrors inherent in the residential schools and realizing that bigotry and racism, disguised as a political movement, know no borders. But he has to learn fast; after all, there's this virus....
Dark Time
The 2009 “Miracle on the Hudson” saved 150 airline passengers from almost certain death, making instant heroes out of the captain who landed the crippled jetliner in an icy river and the crew that guided every passenger to safety. But for Martin Wilkes, whose wife Keira and two sons were on that flight, the miracle has a hollow ending: although the boys return, no one can locate their mother. Keira Wilkes has survived only to disappear. The ensuing search takes the husband from his comfortable home on the Connecticut gold coast to a bleak and inhospitable wilderness, and forces him to confront the validity of everything he believes in.