May 5, 2010
John Hart's The Last Child won this year's Edgar Award for best novel, an award well-deserved. The Last Child is the best mystery I've read in a long time, a thrilling nail-biter that set my adrenalin pumping and my fingers turning the pages. I was up way past my bedtime to finish this book and stayed awake even longer marveling over Hart's exquisite manipulation of all of the pieces of his fascinating puzzle. The pieces of that puzzle came together in the end to reach a conclusion even more chilling than I had anticipated.
The Last Child tells the story of more than one family's disintegration into hell after a twelve-year old girl goes missing. The girl is the twin sister of Johnny Merrimon, and he has never stopped looking for her, even when his father takes off and his mother takes up with the local millionaire drug-dispensing creepo. Local detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped hunting for the girl either, and his home life has suffered for it. Characters keep coming, each more memorable than the last, and each with his/her own burden to bear. The plot of The Last Child twists and turns, twisting the characters along with it, and turning their lives, their certainties, and their hopes upside down.
The countryside of North Carolina is a crucial character in The Last Child and Hart creates both her beauty and her desolation with haunting imagery:"Heavy, damp air carried the scent of the river. Darkness welled up from beneath the bridge, and Hunt glanced north as if he could see the great swath of rough country that pushed down on Raven County: the stony woods and, at the foot of those hills, the twenty-mile stretch of swamp that vomited out the river." The land is steeped in history, some old, some more recent, but all of it redolent of exploitation. On the fringes of the threatening atmosphere created by Hart are hints of possible redemption, through acts of love, kindness, and caring. Whether those forces will prove strong enough to overcome the horror that has seeped in under the doorways of the people of Raven County is the questions that kept me riveted to the pages of this wonderful book.
The magic of The Last Child is how it kept me thinking long after the last page was read -- and how I wished there were more and more pages for me to turn, even at one in the morning! There are so many sub-stories to the main story line, each one thought-provoking and intriguing, that twenty more novels could sprout from this one, each one an exploration of responsibility, courage, and the forces of life that pound down on one's desire to do the right thing. First, the right thing must be understood -- and therein lies the question of humanity set forth by Hart: how do some people understand decency and goodness, and some are subverted and temporarily lost, while others are subverting and permanently evil?
John Hart has written a book wherein each scene, each character, and each pivotal development of plot fit together perfectly, so completely and fluidly, that I was there in that small town, I descended into the hell of lost children, betrayed promises, stalled lives, and lost souls. I was offered the same redemption as the characters were, a possibility offered in an act of compassion coming full circle. That is the final message and the only hope: that one act of caring can stop a tide of evil from drowning everyone in its path. Some will die but those remaining alive have a chance to start over, and to get it right this time. Hope renewed, for one last child.
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