Dead End

The discovery of a bloody handprint on a Dead End sign and the disappearance of a troubled teenager, Hank Pugh, spell trouble for a small Texas town, but the mystery is complicated by the Hank's return, the discovery that his sister Tracie is missing, and the realization that newcomer Sam Knight is the last person to see her alive. Original.

When mail carrier Brette Barry first sees the bloody handprint on a Dead End sign near the Pughs' dairy farm, she believes that her son, Eric, and his moody friend, Hank, have executed a rather convincing Halloween prank. Brette soon notices, however, that Tracie Pugh seems to have disappeared from rural Wood County, Tex., without a trace. Although Brette doesn't know Tracie or anything about her relationship with her disgruntled husband, she proclaims in one of her melodramatic journal entries that she doesn't believe she will ever know "real happiness" until she discovers the origin of the elusive handprint. While Brette clumsily attempts to investigate, her affection for her brooding neighbor, Sam Knight, grows, as does her suspicion that he may be hiding a few dark secrets himself. A subplot involving Hank and his flirtatious mother, Sally, adds another dimension to this convoluted mystery-cum-romance, and Brette's paranoid, trigger-happy colleague provides a series of familiar-sounding one-liners. Although Myers (Lost) effectively conveys a sense of the town's narrow mentality, readers will be disappointed by her flat characters and meandering plot.

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