It's July 1995 and Eddie and April Carter are lost in the middle of nowhere, Michigan. From Ann Arbor, they're 20-something newlyweds on their way to a resort on Lake Michigan for their honeymoon when Eddie gets off the highway and makes a wrong turn. They're on a very desolate, and quite frankly, creepy road in the middle of the night. That's when they see a woman, by herself, no car in sight, walking by herself on the side of the road. Concerned for her, they decide to pick her up. That's when the trouble begins.
After she gets in the car, they realize the woman is seriously injured and bleeding under the large jacket she's wearing. No idea where they are, they rush down the road hoping to find a town with a hospital. Hot on their tail? A big, black pick-up truck. They eventually hit the outskirts of Coldlake Falls, lose the truck, find a hospital, only for the hitchhiker to die. Two strangers in a small town, covered in blood, let's just say the cops set the land speed record for arriving on the scene. Seems that stretch of desolate road, Atticus Line, has quite a history. More than one dead hitchhiker has turned up along that road starting in the mid-1970s. Never mind that it defies logic that Eddie and April would be involved beyond innocent bystanders and witnesses, they're strangers, they're there, and they're covered in blood.
As the cops seem to zero in on Eddie and April, they're stuck in Coldlake Falls. The only way to get out of this mess is to do some snooping on their own. That's when they learn of the other victims and the legend of The Lost Girl, the first victim from the 1970s, never identified, who locals say haunts Atticus Line 👻.
This was a good book. I enjoyed it.
But...
It lacked some of the punch and oomph of some of St. James other books (I think I'm still hungover from The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel...). It's pretty slow and methodical to start, with the author laying groundwork on our couple, Eddie, a veteran of the Iraq War with shades of PTSD, and April, a woman who has drifted, unsettled through life until she met Eddie, and wouldn't you know it? They both have secrets that they haven't been completely upfront with each other about. Naturally those half-truths come home to roost with the cops digging into their backgrounds.
Once Eddie and April decide to start sleuthing in earnest is when things start to pick up, and once again St. James has created some dynamite secondary characters to aid in the cause. There's Rose, a widow with a lace doily and Princess Diana obsession who is boarding them while they're stuck in town, and the Snell sisters, two teenage girls with an obsession for true crime and conspiracy theories. Dare I say it, I would have just read the book for these three, plot be damned. Also, as someone who was a young 20-something in the 1990s, I can say the setting, tone and feel of the story were pitch perfect. The author really nailed it.
Of course it all comes careening to a supernatural, Gothic conclusion and St. James ties up all the loose threads at the end. On that subject, the lead detective on the case is particularly terrible and I didn't really buy his scenes with Eddie and April at the end, but it does wrap up some questions, so it works on that score at least.
It kept me engaged and I did like it, but while I'm one to recommend St. James on the regular to other readers, this one isn't at the top of my list.
Final Grade = B
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