After Her

June 3, 2013
Bestselling author Maynard (The Good Daughters) returns with the story of a broken family rocked by a real-life Bay Area serial killer. Rachel Torricelli and her younger sister, Patty, idolized their father, a homicide detective with a voice like Dino and an insatiable love for women—especially his daughters. After divorce split up their home, he mostly disappeared, and Rachel, who recounts the story as an adult (and a mystery writer), was content playing backyard games and bossing Patty around. But their play is tinged with darkness in the summer of 1979, when murders begin occurring along Marin County’s hiking trails. The girls’ father is on the case and his sudden star power makes Rachel popular, but she can’t resist chasing clues (some courtesy of “visions”), putting her and her sister in harm’s way. Maynard captures the way that memory works in fragments: Rachel recalls “My Sharona” as the soundtrack of the summer, fusing her perspective with that of the killer, who sings it to his victims. Her retelling also flip-flops seamlessly from her teenage anxieties to the front-page news—a testament to Maynard’s narrative dexterity. This cinematic coming-of-age murder mystery satisfyingly blends suspense with nostalgia. Agent: David Kuhn, Kuhn Projects.

September 1, 2013

In summer 1979, Rachel and her younger sister Patty spend their days biking the hills of Marin County in Northern California and generally being precocious tweens, until young women begin turning up dead in the woods above their home. Their detective father is put in charge of the case that the press dubs the "Sunset Strangler." At first the notoriety of their father's high-profile case is exciting and gains them celebrity status at school, but as the case drags on and more young women die, Rachel sees her father's life unravel and her parents' marriage fall apart. Desperate to save her family, young Rachel sets herself up as bait for the killer, the consequence of which destroys her father's career and nearly costs Rachel her life. Thirty years later, the case remains unsolved, and Rachel makes one last attempt to smoke out the killer and vindicate her father, unearthing dark and startling family secrets in the process. VERDICT This title is loosely based on the Trailside Killer case that terrified Marin in the 1970s. Here the case is seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old, giving Maynard's (The Good Daughters; Labor Day) thriller an interesting twist on what would otherwise be a simple reworking of a cold case of serial murder. Rachel is so focused on saving her father and her parents' failed marriage that everything else in the world around her is merely a blur. [The film adaptation of Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, is scheduled for a January 2014 release.--Ed.]--Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2013
Cycling through big themes--love for a flawed father and a loyal sister; the pursuit of a serial killer; coming-of-age/receiving of family wisdom--Maynard's (The Good Daughters, 2010, etc.) latest starts strong but fades. Thirteen-year-old Rachel Torricelli, inseparable big sister of Patty, narrates the story, set in the San Francisco suburbs of the late 1970s. Both girls adore their father, Anthony, a charismatic but inconstant police detective who quits the family home when Rachel is 8, leaving their fragile mother depressed and short of cash. The girls' playground, right behind their house, is Mount Tamalpais, a place full of possibilities, until the Sunset Strangler begins raping and murdering women there. With her handsome father on television leading the murder investigation, Rachel suddenly finds herself popular and attractive to boys. Her busy imagination--she aspires to be a writer--leads to speculation on sex and death and "visions" of the killings. But, despite authorial teasers, the story loses momentum as the sequence of murders grows and Detective Torricelli fails to solve them, diminishing him in the eyes of everyone. With the time frame speeding up, the novel thins out, ending in a speedy, decades-later wrap-up that offers more tidiness than conviction. There's fluency and insight here but also a shortage of subtlety, with the book's underpinnings too visible through its skin.

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July 1, 2013
In the summer of 1979, the Torricelli sisters, aspiring writer Rachel and her athletic younger sister, Patty, enjoy unlimited freedom exploring the mountain behind their home in Marin County, California. Their father is a charismatic detective for the San Francisco Police Department who has been chronically unfaithful to his wife, which has led to their divorce. Their emotionally fragile mother is severely depressed and spends a lot of time in her bedroom. The sisters amuse themselves by watching television through their neighbors' picture windows (providing their own dialogue). But their suburban life is upended when a serial killer starts leaving the bodies of young girls all over the trails of their beloved mountain. Their father, who loved to make his own pasta and belt out Dean Martin songs, is greatly diminished over the many years he devotes to trying to find the vicious killer. The plot of Maynard's eighth novel, although based on the story of the real-life Trailside Killer, strains credulity at times; it is less a thriller than an affecting portrait of the relationship between a father and his daughters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)