Article
Cornelia Read shows remarkable storytelling ability in her debut novel, A Field of Darkness.
Madeline Dare is a twenty-something newly wed, late-flower-child from a family of old money; so old, she’ll tell you that there is none left. She is also a newspaper journalist, whose column usually consists of food articles ranging from the latest apple pie recipe to area wide eating habits. One day all this changed.
She learned quite accidentally of an unsolved mystery: two sisters found dead more than thirty years before. They had had their throats cut and were laid out as though they were sleeping in a bed of roses. No knew who the girls were and certainly no one knew who the killer was; except that Madeline learns that her cousin, Lapthorne Townsend, might have been involved with it.
This was just enough to get Madeline’s imagination working. She decided if could solve the mystery, not only could she clear her cousin’s name, maybe she could write an article acceptable by her “good-for-nothing” editor and finally could get away from that food-corner-of-the-world-desk she found herself in.
It wasn’t too long, however, before Madeline wondered why she had ever started this project. Suddenly she found her friends and acquaintances dying strangely. Then she began finding little clues referring back to books that she had read in her childhood.
With her first book, A Field of Darkness, Cornelia Read has shown herself to be a true writer of mysteries. She pulls no punches, grabbing her readers with the first sentence and keeping them spellbound until the final sentence. The remarkable thing is that this is her first book. As far as I am concerned, I will be looking for her future books to reach the stand.