Standing in the Shadows - Hardcover

Spring, Michelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345424913 ISBN 13: 9780345424914

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1998

Synopsis

The shocking murder lingered in the tabloids for weeks. A sweet elderly lady viciously killed in a town outside Cambridge, her skull crushed with a concrete block by her eleven-year-old foster child, Daryll Flatt. Hideous as the crime was, the case was closed when the boy, curled up in the crack of a willow tree, confessed to the murder. Now, two years later, the boys older brother, Howard, hires private investigator Laura Principal to revisit the case--and to answer the baffling question: Why?

On the surface, Daryll fit the mold of a child murderer perfectly--a hopeless boy abused and cast off by a wretched family. Yet as Laura Principal probes deeper, several curious facts reveal themselves. Perhaps the most alarming piece of evidence never addressed in court--Daryll was particularly agitated the day before the murder. When confronted by his teacher, he confessed: Its a secret. And Im the only one who knows.

For Laura, each question raises another, and each version of events offers conflicting views of the "heartless" boy and his "saintly" foster parent. And with each step closer to the truth, Laura Principal senses someone in the corner of her eye, a threatening presence . . . standing in the shadows . . . watching her every move.

Writing with the sparkling intelligence and razor-sharp wit that readers have come to cherish, Michelle Spring unveils a novel that is both stylish and spellbinding. Standing in the Shadows reaches new heights of psychological suspens--and heart-pounding menace.

About this title

About the Author

Michelle Spring spent the first half of her life in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the second half in Cambridge, England, where she currently lives with her husband and two young children. Under the name Michelle Stanworth, she has had an academic career that spans two and a half decades, four academic books, an affiliated lectureship at Cambridge University, and, most recently, the Professorship of Sociology at Anglia University in Cambridge. In 1994 she published Every Breath You Take, which was nominated for both an Anthony Award and an Arthur Ellis Award as Best First Novel.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Michelle Spring and her heroine Laura Principal:

"The best of the English tradition. . . . An attractive detective, Laura Principal."
--Amanda Cross

"Laura is a fascinating woman of the Nineties, confident in her ability to perform her job even though it can turn dangerous without a warning."
--The Midwest Book Review

From the Inside Flap

murder lingered in the tabloids for weeks. A sweet elderly lady viciously killed in a town outside Cambridge, her skull crushed with a concrete block by her eleven-year-old foster child, Daryll Flatt. Hideous as the crime was, the case was closed when the boy, curled up in the crack of a willow tree, confessed to the murder. Now, two years later, the boys older brother, Howard, hires private investigator Laura Principal to revisit the case--and to answer the baffling question: Why?<br><br>On the surface, Daryll fit the mold of a child murderer perfectly--a hopeless boy abused and cast off by a wretched family. Yet as Laura Principal probes deeper, several curious facts reveal themselves. Perhaps the most alarming piece of evidence never addressed in court--Daryll was particularly agitated the day before the murder. When confronted by his teacher, he confessed: Its a secret. And Im the only one who knows.<br><br>For Laura, each question raises another, and each version of events offers con

Reviews

Nobody ever said Daryll Flatt's life was any bed of roses. By the time he was 11, he'd already been deserted by his abusive father, abandoned by the brother who said he loved him but took off for a job in Australia anyway, and bereaved of the grandmother who'd taken him in. But does any of that excuse his bashing in the head of Geraldine King, the temporary foster mother his social worker had placed him with? Now that Daryll, who unhesitatingly confessed to the Cambridge police, has served 18 months of his sentence, Howard Flatt, back from Australia, wants inquiry agent Laura Principal to find out why the boy killed his guardian. What makes a child kill? asks Laura, whose scant experience (Every Breath You Take, 1994) has done nothing to prepare her for this case. Luckily, the investigators Q-and-A with Geraldine's uncordial neighbors and Daryll's uncaring relatives will be broken up by distractionsan unexpected brush with her partner Sonny Mendlowiz's latest divorce case, an attempt to track down the flasher who's been menacing her friend Helen Cochrane's daughterthat will end up throwing unexpected light on Geraldine's murder. Highly competent parboiled British detective work, even if a crucial few of the dramatis personae remain muffled. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Howard Flatt's description of the murde was flecked with hesitation: just the facts. Geraldine King had died, he told me, on the fourteenth of October.

He left out all the important things. He didn't tell me that Geraldine had dressed with care, as always, on that day--that she'd chosen a blouse in a tone that lifted her sixty-something complexion, and a cardigan, in a blue of the palest shade, that found an echo in her eyes. He didn't tell me that her hair was white and fluffy, nor that her panties, ripped from crotch to hip, turned up at an arm's throw from the body.

Howard had said that Geraldine had been found on the ground under a walnut tree. I only learned later--from Becca Hunter--that blood from the head wounds and runoff from the evening rain had puddled around the body as it had impressed slowly into the soft earth. That by the time Geraldine was found, her pastel cardigan was as wet as sea moss, her skirt so drenched that the pattern of tiny tea roses showed scarcely at all. It was Becca who reported that, when she touched Geraldine, the plushy arms were surfaced with the chill of death.

"And next to her body, just a few feet away," Howard explained, as if he had omitted nothing, "was the tree. And partway up the tree, at the head of a ladder, was a platform. And that was where--" He came to a halt, a frown on the scale of the Cheddar Gorge splitting his bony brows.

"It's all right," I said quietly. "I remember."

We were nursing drinks at a small round table in Parker's Bar. I work in Cambridge whenever I can, but I haven't gotten around to opening an office there....

For a working base in Cambridge, my house on Clare Street does just fine. A filing cabinet, a fax machine, a computer that gives instant connection to Camden, and there you have it--all the convenience of an office, with few of the drawbacks. No commuting to work, and the chance to shift between desk and bed as inspiration strikes.

However, there is one distinct disadvantage. Old clients, or new clients who are friends of friends, are welcome to ring my doorbell....

Howard Flatt had rung me at home--number supplied by the Camden office--at 8:30 A.M. on the dot. "Miss Principal?" he asked.

"Laura Principal," I confirmed. "Can I help you?"

Indeed I could. Howard Flatt wanted to hire a private investigator to follow up a murder that had taken place two years before--the killing of a Geraldine King.

"Your connection to this crime?" I asked. But even as I asked, the answer came to me. The name of the child--only eleven years old at the time--who had been convicted of the murder, was Daryll Flatt.

What must it feel like, I wondered, to have a killer for a baby brother?

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345424913
• ISBN 13: 9780345424914
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 287