The Bright Forever / by Lee Martin

On a summer evening in a small midwestern town, nine-year-old Katie Mackey rides her bike to the library and doesn't come back. Katie being the darling daughter of town magnate Junior Mackey, everything is immediately committed to searching for the missing girl. But with few leads, fewer suspects and only marginal circumstantial evidence, the investigation soon grows cold, unable to net even the smallest details as the days go by. Yet while the authorities know very little, certain key individuals know all too much about the disappearance.

The real story is steadily revealed by a handful of loosely connected individuals, each offering their collective input, regrets, suspicions and secrets about the night in question. Gilley is Katie's sensitive older brother, so filled with remorse over his inability to keep his sister safe that he's willing to do anything (well, almost anything) to see things righted. Then there's Henry Dees. Welcomed into the Mackey home as Katie's tutor, Mister Dees may be a respected high school math teacher, but he's also a bit of a creepy loner whose voyeuristic habits haven't been so discrete as to go unnoticed. Lonely simpleton Claire Mains may not be a suspect, but her own suspicions about her n'er do-well husband Raymond R. can't be quelled, sentiments strongly echoed by more than a few others. Ultimately the fact that Raymond R. looks the part is enough to convince an indignant Junior Mackey who, ignoring all due process of law, subsequently takes justice into his own hands.

Readers will enjoy how Martin, author of River of Heaven, combines an omniscient narrative with multiple first-person perspectives, able to reveal the most intimate of intimate details about the story and surrounding context. The characters aren't so appealing though. Dees, with whom the most confidences are exchanged, is an irritatingly sensitive guy with little to do but mope about his lot as an outcast amid the splendor of the Mackeys, their charming home and vibrant children. Gilley is totally one-dimensional as the all-american older brother, never quite real enough to express anything but sentimental fondness for the world around him. And while the two villains, Raymond R and Junior Mackey, bring welcomed attitude and action, they do so in predictably flagrant fashion providing the story with little depth or substance. (FIC MARTIN)