Adult/High School-A suspenseful psychological thriller with troubled characters. It is 1952. Albert Jay Smalls, arrested on suspicion of murdering eight-year-old Cathy Lake, is scheduled to be released at 6 a.m. unless compelling evidence against him can be uncovered. Police Chief Thomas Burke calls in two detectives to spend the night interrogating the young vagrant who was found living in a drainage pipe near the murder scene. Jack Pierce, one of the detectives, is staggering under his own emotional load. His daughter was murdered four years earlier, his marriage dissolved under the anger and grief, and, reminiscent of this case, the suspected murderer was released for lack of evidence. Pierce has promised Cathy's mother that this crime won't go unpunished. His partner, Norman Cohen, still reels from confronting the horrors involved in liberating a concentration camp during the war. For both men, Smalls represents one evil that they have a chance to stop and contain. During the course of this one night, readers meet peripheral characters, learn more about the defendant, and watch as the intensity builds with the passage of time. Each of these characters is struggling with unresolved issues and, interestingly, all revolve around one another in layers of surprising connections. More than just a page-turner, this novel is a psychological dissection of troubled souls trying to get through the night.-Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

It's 1952. Three cops take turns grilling one suspect in Interrogation Room Number Three. They have 12 hours to solve the murder of a little girl, found strangled to death in a park, before the suspect must be released. The suspect is Albert Jay Smalls, a drifter whose last place of residence was a pipe only feet away from where the child's body was found. Smalls is ill-matched for the chess game the cops play, in relay teams, as they move from the Case Files Room, to the office of the chief of detectives, back to the park, back to Interrogation Room Number Three. In its concentration on the time element, Cook's suspense tale resembles a TV drama more than a traditionally structured mystery. The ticking clock, in addition to the economy of scene, makes this an incredibly intense read, culminating in a true shocker of an ending. --Connie Fletcher

Did Albert Jay Smalls strangle eight-year-old Cathy Lake to death on a rainy afternoon in 1952? Two police detectives have 11 hours to find out before Smalls is released. The Edgar-winning Cook makes the most of that brief period of time, not only braiding the intricate elements of the crime but laying open the secretive, troubled lives of at least half a dozen characters. The case against Smalls is thin no witnesses, no physical evidence. A homeless vagrant who lived in a tunnel not far from where Cathy's body was found, he's been in custody for more than a week. No one has been able to crack his denial of the murder, but detectives Jack Pierce and Norman Cohen sense he's hiding something. Employing flashbacks and parallel action while in the interrogation frame, Cook adroitly weaves back and forth between the crime itself, the subsequent investigation and the halting questioning of the suspect. More compelling, however, is his portrayal of how the crime affects Pierce and Cohen, as well as several secondary characters. Pierce, for example, is a man driven by rage: his own daughter was murdered six years earlier and her case went unsolved. Cohen, who conducts most of the questioning while Pierce plows into Smalls's past, is still numb from what he saw in Germany as a soldier. Down to the cleverly hatched, melancholy ending, Cook (The Chatham School Affair; Places in the Dark) again takes readers down a dark, treacherous road into the heart of human fallibility and struggle. (Apr. 2) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Englishtown, USA, 1952. Two weeks after Cathy Lake, eight, was found strangled in the park where she played every day, the cops are down to their last twelve hours before they have to turn loose their suspect, a homeless fellow whom witnesses place at the scene and whose only defense is that he was trying to protect the little girl from a threatening man nobody else ever saw. So Chief of Detectives Thomas Burke turns veteran Detectives Norman Cohen and Jack Pierce loose on Albert Jay Smalls, hoping that this last marathon interrogation will turn up a lead all the others missed. Pierce is fighting his own demons-he can't forget the man who murdered his own eight-year-old daughter Debra four years ago, beat the rap, and then killed himself-and so is Burke, whose son, a drug addict and petty thief, lies on his deathbed. As Cohen and Pierce race against the clock to shake loose a clue, Smalls-a sad, self-pitying midge who has little to say for himself except that he never killed anybody-doesn't budge an inch. But a chance remark gives his interlocutors an entree into his past, where they'll find violence, tenderness, unspeakable evil, and the churning torment of a lost soul a little too close to them for comfort before the final sickening surprise. The irresistible premise guarantees a story that's slicker and faster-moving than The Chatham School Affair (1997) and Instruments of Night (1998)-and if it doesn't achieve quite the psychological intensity of Cook's last pair of novels, well, what does?