Kate Cypher, divorced, a 41-year-old school nurse, has flown from her job in Seattle to her mother's home in Vermont. Mom has Alzheimer's, and is steadily getting worse; Kate has to arrange a new living situation for her. But the day she arrives in town, a teenaged girl is murdered....in an identical fashion to how a friend of Kate's was murdered 30 years before. Undoubtedly there's a connection...but what?
What makes this different is there's a definite supernatural element. Del Griswold (derisively called "the Potato Girl" due to a constant smell that hung about her) was from a white-trash family, definitely troubled, held back in school, and her murder seems sadly a release from a horrible life with no prospects. But she was desperate for a friend, and young Kate Cypher was willing to play along. Kate, however, was also keenly aware that Del was extremely unpopular, and hanging out with her was social death, so she tried to shrug it off as "we waited at the bus stop, I barely knew her" kind of thing. But when an adult Kate returns, Del shows up in the edges of Kate's vision, and while you might at first think that it's symptomatic of Kate's guilt over her betrayal of Del's trust as a child and her lifelong denial of knowing anything about her after her murder, it turns out that Del really IS coming back, and soon possesses Kate's mother to communicate. It's clear that the ghostly visitations are indeed real.
What did I like? The atmosphere (Kate's mom lived in a failed utopian commune/settlement), the way the supernatural is handled, and how McMahon presents Del as having become a figure of local folklore, somewhere in between Bloody Mary and the Blair Witch. And the ins and outs of Kate's friendship with Del, and her attempts to play the situation to her advantage with the other kids at school, ring true. Childhood can be horribly cruel.
What didn't I like? The solution to the murders is a bit hasty and unsatisfactory. Some plot elements are never explored, like how one of Del's tormentors died, supposedly choking to death on a slice of raw potato; it's mentioned in passing but never developed further. Kate angered me as she persists in hiding things and keeping secrets when she doesn't need to, and there's no sense at the end that's she's learned anything from her experience.
Still, it wasn't overly long; I hate overly padded books. I started it on a Sunday afternoon and finished by bedtime. It moved along briskly and was never drawn-out or dull, and that's pretty damn remarkable.
It was McMahon's first book, and there's a bunch more out there, so I may start looking into them. It's supernatural without real horror; the ghosts are the remains of tragic happenings and circumstances, and the mystery plot is what takes center stage. (There's almost a strain of magical realism here....) So I'm willing to forgive some imperfections for a first novel, especially such a well-paced and atmospheric one. Not bad in the least and worth an afternoon in your reading nook.
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