by Robert Clark
First published 2008
A dead woman lies on a hillside in St. Paul. The year is 1939, and the victim worked as a dime-a-dance girl. Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner takes the case, still reeling from his wife's recent death. His investigation leads him to Herbert White, a reclusive photographer who captures suggestive images of the dance hall girls. White presents a puzzle that deepens with each encounter. The man suffers from severe memory loss and depends on journals and scrapbooks to piece together his daily existence. When Horner questions him about the murder, White offers little help. He simply cannot remember. As the investigation stalls, Horner finds himself drawn into White's fractured world, where the boundary between what happened and what might have happened grows increasingly thin. The case forces both men to confront how memory shapes identity and whether truth can exist without recollection.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, crime, detective, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fractured-identity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: St. Paul
Period: 1939
352 pages · Paperback · Picador Paper
Content warnings: death, murder