Prove the Nameless

Atlantic City newspaper reporter Owen Keane is asked to investigate a twenty-year-old multiple murder that claimed all but one member of a prominent local family, and Keane does so, until the trail leads him to the murderer and his own worst fears

Owen Keane, the philosophical and mildly alienated seminary dropout seen before in The Lost Keats and Deadstick, is working as a newspaper copy editor on the New Jersey coast. His interest is captured by an anniversary story about the unsolved murder of a local family 20 years ago that left a young girl orphaned, a cop obsessed, and now provides just the kind of lost cause Keane thrives on. At the time, there were three likely suspects: the dead dad's business partner with mob connections, a hippie guru of a nearby religious compound and a down-on-his-luck local handyman. But in the following decades the handyman died, the partner committed suicide and the guru vanished. The surviving girl is now grown up and wants the case reopened. The partner's widow claims to possess valuable evidence. The girl's insistence soon leads to another murder. Faherty toggles among his trio of suspects and expertly manipulates several subplots that explore guilt and obsession. The resolution is efficiently rendered and makes good sense?until the author turns the screw once too often. Obsession is turned into a warped sense of identity, and the hunter is fused with the murderer in a less than convincing final twist that doesn't entirely spoil what's gone before, but diminishes its impact.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Owen Keane--Atlantic City copy editor, avocational private eye, and searcher after truth--makes his fourth appearance since his Edgar-nominated debut in Deadstick (1991). After tinkering with a 20-years-later newspaper feature on a local mass murder, Owen is put in touch with the crime's sole survivor: a college student still haunted by the slaughter of her parents and siblings. He begins to interview those concerned with the unsolved crime: frustrated cops, retired and still on the job; a Mob-linked widow whose husband, now dead, was implicated in the case; an exploitative cult leader turned self-help entrepreneur; a guilt- ridden neighbor. And then there's the young reporter who recapped the case and who challenges Owen to an investigative contest that ends in a sexual encounter. Throughout the search--which eventually loses him his job--Owen ruminates on past experiences and the nature of existence with an ex-seminarian solemnity that's his trademark. Fortunately, he also displays a gentle wit and compassion for those touched by a violence that proves to be not at all random. Faherty offers a dense plot, an excellent South Jersey sense of place, and a likable and unusual hero. But he should take more trouble with the motivations of his secondary characters-- murderers, just for starters. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.