Darkside: A Novel - Softcover

Bauer, Belinda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451612753 ISBN 13: 9781451612752

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2011

Synopsis

In bleak midwinter, the people of Shipcott are shocked by the murder of an elderly woman in her bed. As snow cuts off the village, local policeman Jonas Holly is torn between catching a brutal killer and protecting his vulnerable wife, Lucy.

When the inquiry is commandeered by an abrasive senior detective, Jonas finds himself derided by his colleagues and ashamed to admit to Lucy that he’s been sidelined. It seems his first murder investigation may be over before it’s begun. But when he receives a series of increasingly sinister anonymous notes, Jonas is thrust back into the center of the case. Someone in the village is taunting him, blaming him for the tragedy. Someone thinks he’s not doing his job; someone seems to know every move he makes. And soon Jonas has to ask: Who’s hunting who?
 

About this title

About the Author

Belinda Bauer grew up in England and South Africa. She has worked as a journalist and screenwriter, and her script The Locker Room earned her the Carl Foreman/Bafta Award for Young British Screenwriters, an award that was presented to her by Sidney Poitier. She was a runner-up in the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition for “Mysterious Ways,” about a girl stranded on a desert island with 30,000 Bibles. Belinda now lives in Wales. Her latest novel, Snap, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE SOUNDS OF THE HOSPITAL CAME BACK TO LUCY MUFFLED AND from far away. She became aware of a big hand holding hers—tough, dry, and warm.

Jonas, she thought with a twist of guilt.

Stiffly she moved her head and opened her eyes, expecting to read worry, relief—even anger—in his eyes.

Instead, for one crazy moment, she found she had been sucked through a tear in time, and that she was married to a small boy wearing a look of such terror on his face that she flinched and clutched at his hand as if he were the one who was falling.

“Jonas!”

Her throat burned and the word came out as a harsh caw, but it aged him like a slap in the face and immediately his eyes filled with all those emotions she’d expected to see when she first looked up at him—even the anger.

Lucy didn’t care. She brimmed with tears. Jonas held her in his arms—a man again—and she overflowed into the crook of his elbow while he bent over her and said quiet, tender things into her hair.

“I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed, but she couldn’t even understand her own muffled words.

And anyway, she wasn’t certain they were true.

© 2011 Belinda Bauer

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1451612753
• ISBN 13: 9781451612752
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304