Four Corners of Night
From The New York Times (Daily)
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; It's Late. Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
Published: January 14, 1999
FOUR CORNERS OF NIGHT
By Craig Holden
367 pages. Delacorte Press. $23.95.
It is Sunday morning in a small Ohio city at the opening of Craig Holden's tense, thoughtful thriller, ''Four Corners of Night.''
''Palm Sunday for the Christians,'' thinks the narrator, Max Steiner, a half-Jewish, half-Lutheran cop known as Big Mack because of his small stature.
Mack and his longtime buddy, Bank Arbaugh, are eating breakfast at an old Denny's restaurant after a night of prowling the city in a squad car, ''watching the buys and the bars and whores,'' when the dispatch call comes: ''Available units, respond to the report of a child missing at 230 King's Court. . . . Three oh six, a woman says her daughter disappeared. Twelve-year-old daughter.'' It seems the girl, Tamara Shipley, was riding her bike when two men in a car drove by and abducted her.
to read the rest of the review, click here.
From The New York Times book Review
by Marilyn Stasio
January 10, 1999
With kidnapped children so commonplace in suspense thrillers that writers have to snatch them by the busload to get any attention, it's gratifying to watch Craig Holden, in FOUR CORNERS OF NIGHT (Delacorte, $23.95), find enough meaning in the loss of one child to support a multilayered morality tale about the breakdown of trust between husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend.
To the narrator, a sensitive cop everybody calls Mack, the kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl in an unnamed Ohio city is an invitation to examine a friendship that ended seven years earlier, when his partner's 11-year-old daughter left the house for softball practice and was never seen again. The partner, a raging-bull kind of guy everybody calls Bank, went a little crazy at the time, dragging Mack into the vortex with him, and things have never been the same between them. Now, as all the old issues resurface, so does all the old craziness.
Holden doesn't write a conventional story line. As Mack's mind races back and forth from the past to the present, the two time frames intersect and characters collide, sometimes with their own younger selves. It's a difficult narrative to follow, and it's disastrous if you lose sympathy for Mack, whose hero worship of Bank (''He acted at times as my conscience and my spine'') strains patience. But in the end, it's worth hanging on, if only to see how far beyond its conventions a talented writer can take the genre.
Kirkus Reviews
1999
A veteran cop questions his fitness for the work he's in as this action-packed, multilayered suspenser gets underway. Mack Steiner probably spends too much time pondering abstractions. The fact is, he's been on the force for 14 years ... more ยป, getting the job done. Moreover, he has this friend, Bank Arbaugh, who supplies enough self-confidence to cover the both of them. Bank's a paragon of a policeman, generally acknowledged as the best in the midsized Ohio city where the cronies ply their trade. He tells the world Mack's okay; and when Bank speaks, the world listens. Then one frightening, gut-wrenching night, Mack's introspection goes by the board, replaced by the compelling need to act: a 12-year-old girl is kidnaped. Or could she have just run off? Either way, the circumstances are dismally reminiscent of an earlier case, one traumatic enough to have scarred each man. The investigation gathers speed, beginning to generate some information. Instead of clarifying the nature of the crime, however, what the men learn merely obscures it. Meanwhile, Mack is feeling increasing pressure at home. The war between his daughter and his wife (her stepdaughter) has heated up, demanding his intervention--but what kind? It's also now inescapable that the missing child and his own child shared a connection. When in turn she goes missing, the pressure intensifies exponentially, and Mack and Bank find their friendship both more fragile and more complex than either had ever imagined. Holden is becoming expert at serving up the tried-and-true elements of a competent thriller (The Last Sanctuary, 1995, etc.). What gives this one distinction is the interesting commentary he has to make about male friendship--both how it works and about the way it can hurt men.
Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.
The Mystery Reader
Four Corners of Night
by Craig Holden
(Delacorte, $23.95, V) ISBN 0-385-31625-9
*****
If TMR had an "Uncozy Mysteries" category, Four Corners of Night would definitely qualify. A dark multi-layered tale of devotion, loss, willful blindness, and the nature of friendship, this is one of those books that grab you, suck you in, make you squirm, and hang in your memory. I was so engrossed that I climbed out of bed at 3 a.m. because I couldn't go back to sleep until I'd finished it.
to read the rest of the review, click
Mesilla Comes AliveUnder construction
