A Dancer In the Dust (36 page)
Read A Dancer In the Dust Online
Authors: Thomas H. Cook
How quietly they can begin, as I would starkly realize on the last day of my trial, the journeys that return us to our crimes.
Ray Campbell runs his own risk assessment firm in New York. But, twenty years ago, he was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country.
When a friend from his time in Lubanda is found murdered in a New York alley, Ray is forced to reconsider his year of living dangerously. Signs suggest that this most recent tragedy is rooted in the far more distant one of Martine Aubert; the only woman Ray ever truly loved, whose fate he’d sealed in a moment of grievous error.
Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland starkly conflicted with those charged with its so-called development. But Ray’s failure to understand Martine’s commitment to her country had placed a noose around her neck, one tightened by a circle of vicious men, cruel taunts, and whistling machetes.
It is Ray’s return to the passion he’d once felt for Martine that makes
A Dancer in the Dust
an enthralling and moving story of two loves: Ray’s love for Martine Aubert, and Martine’s love for a homeland that did not love her back.
‘Thomas H. Cook has long been one of my favourite writers.’
Harlan Coben
‘Thomas H. Cook writes with uncommon elegance, intelligence and emotional insight.’
The Times
‘Nobody does it better than Thomas H. Cook!’
Judith Kelman
‘One of crime fiction’s most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected ending.’
New York Times
‘Cook has shown himself to be a writer of poetic gifts, constantly pushing against the presumed limits of crime fiction.’
LA Times Book Review
‘Thomas H. Cook is a rare jewel of a writer, a powerful storyteller and an elegant stylist. If you are not familiar with his work, you absolutely should be.’
John Hart
‘Thomas H. Cook is a master of the psychological suspense novel.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Thomas H. Cook writes like a wounded angel.’
Peter Straub
‘[Cook] displays an impressive narrative simplicity and a therapist’s insightfulness, producing finely crafted psychological crime-fare.’
Kirkus
‘Cook is a marvellous stylist, gracing his prose with splendid observations about people and the lush, potentially lethal, landscape surrounding them.’
Publishers Weekly
T
HOMAS
H. C
OOK
won an Edgar award for his novel
The Chatham School Affair
and has been shortlisted for the award seven times, most recently with
Sandrine
. Cook lives with his family in Cape Cod and New York City.
Keep up to date with him on
Facebook
and
tomhcook.com
The verdict hardly mattered. I knew what I’d done, and how I’d done it.
And by what means I had tried to get away with it.
From the outside, the marriage of Sandrine and Samuel Madison was both untroubled and enviable: jobs at the same liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, and a home filled with art and literature.
But when Sandrine is found dead in their bedroom, the coroner reports an overdose of pain medication and alcohol, and Samuel finds himself on trial for her murder.
From Edgar Award-winning author Thomas H. Cook,
Sandrine
is a powerful novel about the evil that can lurk within the heart of a seemingly ordinary man, and whether love can be reawakened, even after death.
Sandrine
is available
here
.
A famous writer is dead. Suicide? Punishment? Or Justice?
Julian Wells was a writer of dark non-fiction works that detailed some of the worst crimes of the 20th Century. Was it this exploration of man’s inhumanity to man that caused him to take his own life?
When his body is found in a boat drifting in a pond in Montauk, New York, his best friend, the literary critic Philip Anders, begins to reread his work in order to prepare a eulogy. This rereading, along with other clues, convinces the critic that his friend has committed a terrible crime, and that it was as punishment for this crime that Wells took his own life.
Anders’ investigation sparks an obsession with unravelling the mystery of the man he thought he knew. His journey towards understanding leads him from Paris to Budapest, spans four decades, and takes him deeper and deeper in to the heart of darkness that was Julian Wells...
The Crime of Julian Wells
is available
here
.
OTHER FICTION
Blood Innocents
The Orchids
Tabernacle
Elena
Sacrificial Ground
Flesh and Blood
Streets of Fire
Night Secrets
The City When It Rains
Evidence of Blood
Mortal Memory
Breakheart Hill
The Chatham School Affair
Instruments of Night
Places in the Dark
The Interrogation
Taken
(based on the teleplay by Leslie Boehm)
Moon over Manhattan
(with Larry King)
Peril
Into the Web
Red Leaves
The Cloud of Unknowing
Master of the Delta
The Fate of Katherine Carr
The Last Talk with Lola Faye
The Quest for Anna Klein
The Crime of Julian Wells
NON-FICTION
Early Graves
Blood Echoes
A Father’s Story
(as told by Lionel Dahmer)
Best American Crime Writing
2000, 2001
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2002
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2003
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2004
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2005
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2006
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2007
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2008
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2009
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2010
(ed. with Otto Penzler)
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