This was a good book, I liked it. It was a bit long, but maybe I felt it too long because of how stressed I was in that period (well, still am actually), but the book was good. Nothing totally useless as I often find in other novels; not too many descriptions, just those pertinent to the story, they didn't bother me at all. Interesting characters and plot, although a very tough one. It's a story of murders and pedophiles, and it's all very sick, but the book is well written, captivating, and the investigation is well told. In details, it all starts when reporter Jack McEvoy is told of the death of his brother Sean, his twin brother. Suicide. It seems absurd, but everybody is sure it is a suicide, and Jack believes them for a while. Sean was a policeman and apparently he left a strange note: "out of space, out of time". Not able to cope with his death, Jack starts a research on cops that committed suicide, planning to write an article about it, and he reads of a cop that left a note as bizarre as Sean's. Jack also reads that that particular note was taken from Poe, and there it all starts.
The main character of that story (from which the note was taken) was called Roderick Usher, and the day he died Sean had to meet a person named Rusher! Jack finds that "out of space out of time" is also taken from a poem written by Poe. He talks about it to the FBI, at this point sure that Sean was murdered by a serial killer leaving notes taken from Poe's work. He finds other cases of cops whose murder was believed to be a suicide but wasn't. He works together with an FBI team (the BAU like in Criminal Minds :-p). Bob Backus is the leader, then there are Rachel Walling and her ex husband Gordon Thorson. She is very beautiful and he acts like a jerk, so no wonder that Jack hates him and distrusts him, while falling in love with Rachel. The book, as so often happens, follows two stories. Jack's investigation and Gladden's story from his point of view. He is a pedophile, who kills the children to "spare them from becoming like him", who was also raped as a child by a cop who was supposed to care after him. Gladden would also take pictures of these children and sell them online to make money, because there's a lot of sick, disgusting people out there in the world.
The reader is of course led to believe that Gladden is the serial killer they're looking for, the same man that after killing the children and the people connected with them who had spotted him and alerted the police on him, also kills the cops that work on the murder cases.
When the story comes out on the papers, Jack is sure, again no wonder, it's very very human, that it was Gordon who talked to a journalist. He never doubts it, until it all seemed to end when Gladden kills Gordon and in a struggle Jack kills Gladden. Thinking about it over and over, Jack starts to believe that Gladden was guilty only of the first murders, not of the cops' deaths. He reviews everything in his head. If he first suspected Gordon of having betrayed their deal, because he greatly disliked him, he then turns to Rachel. He is so insecure when it comes to love affairs that had always wondered if she really cared about him or wanted something else from him. He now thinks she lied all along, using Gordon's room to send the fax signed from the poet, stealing documents from Jack's room and killing those cops as she probably once killed her father who had raped her.
Everything seems to fall into place to make her the poet, so he talks about it to Backus, the only one he thought he could trust. Wrong.
Backus was the poet, and he used those notes to link his crimes to Gladden, and it would have worked but for Jack's talk with Gladden and his relationship with Rachel, who came looking for him after hearing him on the phone and sensing that something was wrong. Rachel arrives in time to save him, but she is a strong, tough woman who cannot forgive him for believing all those horrible things about her instead of trusting her.
Jack goes home, sells his book on the poet making lots of money that he'll use to help Sean's yet unborn child.
Nobody knows for sure why Backus did it, that's the thing about this ending. There was a clear motive for Gladden, there was one similar for Rachel, but it's not clear why Backus did it.
He is not found. Some believe he's dead, others keep looking for him.
ITA il poeta
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