Prosecutor Bell Elkins soon
realizes that her Appalachian hometown is facing a tragically fatal challenge
fighting a single day’s record number of heroin overdoses from a batch tainted
with a lethal tranquilizer as Fast Falls
the Night. This is the most recent in the enthralling mystery series by
Pulitzer Prize winner and author Julia Keller.
The first overdose murder comes
right after midnight, followed by many more before the full day ends. The Police
and Prosecutor work desperately to track down who is selling the bad batch of
drugs. It’s most disturbing that this novel is based on a real life event. The
author tells this story through the perspectives of the different victims and
also other people in the small town of Acker’s Gap in West Virginia. The reader
then gets an understanding of what brings people to the brink of tragedy, and
also the impacts that one person’s actions can have on so many different
people.
While Bell Elkins is feverishly
working with the police, she’s also facing some dark family issues surprisingly
uncovered, that is undeniably life altering. It’s one thing to deal
professionally with unspoken tragic events that affect others, but how will
Bell deal with it when she’s confronted with buried emotions and acts within
her own personal history?
The
author, Julia Keller, spent twelve years as a reporter and editor for the
Chicago Tribune. It was during that time that she won the Pulitzer for Journalism. As the Chicago Tribune
described – “. . . for a gripping, meticulously reconstructed account of a
deadly 10-second tornado that ripped through Utica, Illinois.” What struck me
immediately by these articles she wrote in 2004 was how she puts the reader so
completely into the setting and scene of the storm, through every sense
including desperation/fear, but the focus was how she made the stories about
the people – their stories and the impact on their lives. It’s so much like her
writing in her books. So often in mysteries it’s the acts that are the focus,
but she puts the characters in the forefront. In Fast Falls the Night each chapter heading is a character, and each
is written from their different points of view. The reader really gets to walk
a few steps in these characters shoes, and that elicits a glimmer of understanding.
And if you want to hear
more from the author listen to Kendall &
Cooper Talk Mysteries with Julia Keller
