Light before Day
by Christopher Rice
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Talk Miramax Books, Hyperion (New York): 16 March 2005. Hardcover: 336 pages. ISBN-10: 1-4013-0039-1 ISBN-13: 978-1401300395 Suggested retail price: $23.95 (US) Tags: alcoholism; homosexuality; investigation; journalists; meth labs; murder; Mystery; novelists; pedophilia; rape; suicide; Thriller Tactical strength: [6/10] |
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You can barely call Adam Murphy a journalist. He works for a sensationalist Hollywood newspaper that caters to glitz more than any sort of serious reporting. Besides having an editorial view that conflicts with his boss's, Adam drinks to such excess that he regularly blacks out and only hears later about his bad behavior in the gay bar or with his partner in his apartment. The drinking seems to have driven Adam's latest partner Cory away, but when Adam goes to check on Cory, it appears that a serial killer who only attacks gay men has made Cory his next victim. Adam starts looking into Cory's disappearance which somehow seem connected to Marine helicopter pilot Daniel Brady, who killed himself by crashing his plane into the ocean.
As Adam investigates, he hooks up with a well-known novelist James Wilton, who exploits real tragedies for his novels, including his own. One of his novels lead to an attack on Wilton and his wife, and Wilton subsequently leads a reclusive life in a well guarded compound. The partnership does help Adam keep focused on what or who to investigate next, but we can't help but see that Adam has only entered into another abusive relationship -- this one just doesn't happen to have a sexual component. The investigation turns up clues that Brady was homosexual, that a pedophile pimp seems to have connections to both Cory and Brady and to three other homosexual men that have recently disappeared. As Adam digs deeper, he uncovers several murders -- both ancient and recent -- and a child pornography ring that uses the latest wireless technology to brodacast the live raping of children to exclusive customers. And in typical thriller/mystery style, just about any one of the characters had the motive to orchestrate the murders.
In this third novel, I felt that Christopher Rice had finally built something organic that didn't feel contrived. His previous efforts A Density of Souls (2000) and The Snow Garden (2001) felt like he was piecing together his stories using styles that he borrowed from other writers. In Lighte before Day, he seems to have settled on his own style, and the novel reads much easier. Rice still has some problems with staid dialog and some cluncky prose, but now that he's decided on what he wants his voice to sound like, I think many of the other problems will quicly dissipate in subsequent works.
Also, Rice has worked the homosexuality more evenly into the storyline -- it doesn't stand out as a red flag. In the previous books, the homosexuality seemed like a element forced into the plot. In this case, the story just happens to involve homosexual people. Some of the character motivations originate from their homosexuality or their attempts to hide their pedophilia, and these developments fit much more naturally into Rice's plot.
Still not great literature and probably won't last like his mother's works, but nevertheless the story pulls you along much better than the previous two novels and gives you a few satisfying thrills.
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