Investigating the Darker Corners

Investigating the Darker Corners

alumni books

PETER HELLER ’82

$26

IT’S NO EASY THING, BLENDING THE LITerary novel with the detective novel. Ask any of the legion of writers who’ve laid siege to the citadel of that hybrid form—from either direction—and been repelled. A detective novelist with a flair for suspense and intricate plotting but no gift for language or nuanced insight is bound to fail. So is the writer with all the literary texture in the world but no real grasp of the unforgiving mechanics and non-negotiable velocity of mystery fiction.

Kudos, then, to Heller, who finds that elusive sweet spot between the two genres in Celine, a page-turning private-eye yarn that investigates not only a particular unsolved case but also some

of the darker corners of human character. Add to this already potent combination Heller’s gifts for describing nature and his poignancy of feeling—delivered in the silken prose that readers have come to expect from the author of The Dog Stars and The Painter—and the result is that rare thing: a thriller that will satisfy readers on either side of the literarypopular fiction divide.

The novel follows its eponymous heroine, a New York-based private detective (modeled on, we’re told, the author’s own mother) with an aristocratic background, a sympathy for underdogs and a special interest in finding missing people and reuniting families. Although worn down by the years and the losses mounting in her own life, Celine takes on the case of a beautiful former student whose father was killed by a grizzly bear at Yellowstone National Park—or was he? As Celine and her husband, Pete, make their way west, it becomes clear that someone is keen for their questions to go unanswered. Celine, naturally, has other ideas.

It will be interesting to see whether Heller writes more novels featuring Celine, entering her into an elite sorority that includes V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone and Kay Scarpetta. She’s older, richer and arguably wiser than any of them, but I bet they’d have plenty to talk about.

KEVIN NANCE is a Chicago-based freelance writer and regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.