The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney

First Sentence:  In summer, the season of the Hollywood blockbuster, Bingham, got to work at eight in the morning and didn’t leave until long after midnight.

      

There were two unsolved crimes in the summer of 1986; six movie theater workers were murdered, and a teenaged girl vanished from the state fair.  Now, 25-years later, two people are trying to find answers to those two mysteries. But now there’s a third mystery. Wyatt, now a P.I. in Las Vegas, has been hired to return to the small Oklahoma town where he grew up in order to find out who is trying to destroy the owner's music club. Are the three cases linked?

      

Berney creates a very good sense of time and place, immediately drawing one into the story.  He then tops that off by also creating a palpable aura of fear, but without graphic detail.

      

All three primary characters—Wyatt, the PI; Candice, who is being harassed; and Julianne, whose sister disappeared—are well developed and interesting.  Yet it is Wyatt, in particular, who draws one in and makes one care.  He makes the reader want the answer to this question as much as he does—“One of the toughest things about being a detective, Wyatt supposed, was that you never really stopped detecting.”  Wyatt makes us contemplate.  Don’t we all, at times, wonder about those from our past?—“He tried to remember the line from Lear.  “That way madness lies.”"  

      

The plot keeps one turning page after page.  The threat against Candice is real and absolutely chilling.  What is more effective than a plot that has definite “Wow!” moments as does the mystery involving Julianne’s sister.

      

“The Long and Faraway Gone” is not your average mystery.  Yes, there are mysteries, and there are resolutions; however, it is more about people who were once lost, but now are found.  It truly deserves every award it was given.

     

THE LONG AND FARAWAY GONE (Novel-Wyatt-Oklahoma City-Contemp) - Ex

      Berney, Lou - Standalone

      William Morrow Paperbacks-Feb 2015