心の砕ける音 (文春文庫) [文庫]

血とバラの中で死んでいた弟、その死にとり憑かれた兄。兄弟の運命をかえた謎の女……。クックが深く静かに訴えかけるせつない物語

ロマンチストの弟は「運命の女」がきっといると信じていた。リアリストの兄はそんな女がいるはずはないと思っていた。美しく謎めいた女が兄弟の住む小さな町に現れたとき、ふたりはたしかに「運命の女」にめぐりあったのだったが…。クックがミステリを超えて、またひとつ美しくも悲しい物語を紡ぎだした。

Penzler Pick, March 2000: If someone held a gun to my head and told me I had to pick the single best mystery novel of the 1990s, I'd have to say Thomas H. Cook's Breakheart Hill. This magnificent decade introduced Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly to readers, neither of whom is capable of writing a bad book. George Pelecanos came along too, and Robert Crais wrote L.A. Requiem. There were novels by Elmore Leonard, Ruth Rendell, Donald E. Westlake, James Crumley, Ed McBain, and Stephen Greenleaf, along with an equal number of distinguished writers whose work raised the bar on the excellence of the literature of crime. But the book that lasts in the memory, the one that is so poetic--yet shocking--is for me Breakheart Hill, and Cook's next book, The Chatham School Affair, isn't far behind, winning the Edgar Allan Poe Award as the best book of the year.

His new one, Places in the Dark, once again takes readers into the heart of darkness in a beautiful and compelling story. Dora March, a lovely, green-eyed young woman, shows up in a small Maine seacoast village in the autumn of 1937. She steps off a bus with nothing and is soon hired by the wealthiest man in town as a housekeeper. He is old and frail and soon dies, leaving everything to her in his will. The gossips all know that she was only interested in his money, and rumors abound that she helped him along on his final journey. But she leaves the town just as suddenly and mysteriously as she arrived, having told the lawyers that she wants nothing.

Dora also affects the lives of two brothers. One falls in love with her and subsequently dies. The other believes she is responsible and sets out to find her and avenge his brother's death, becoming so obsessed with finding her that he is driven nearly mad. This unusual and haunting tale is a worthy addition to the opera of one of the bright, shining stars of contemporary American literature. --Otto Penzler
--このテキストは、 マスマーケット 版に関連付けられています。

Thomas H. Cook's Instruments of Night won the prestigious Edgar crime novel award in the US, and gleaned a considerable following on this side of the Atlantic. His new book, Places in the Dark, looks likely to consolidate that success with an elegantly textured narrative in which the past casts a long shadow on the present. Like Hitchcock, Cook is concerned with guilt and malign human intention, and the way in which he marshals his cannily structured plot is truly compelling (this novel is, in fact, precisely the kind of thing that would have tempted The Master in one of his famous trawls for film material). In 1937, a woman appears in a small town on the coast of Maine. Dora March is unforthcoming about her background, but the people of the town come to like and admire her--particularly the Chase Brothers, Cal and Billy. But within a year, Billy is dead, and Cal is mercilessly pursuing the woman who appears to have killed his brother. Needless to say, all is not as it seems, and the slow accretion of suspense is handled with a very sure touch. Cook's speciality, though, is characterisation--and that is particularly acute here, not least in the enigmatic Dora. And the first person narration by Cal Chase never puts a foot wrong, as in a description of the brothers' attempt to save a young girl from drowning:

She was moving swiftly on currents that had not yet been tamed, and which would inevitably propel her across the still turbulent surface that lay between the bridge and the lethal, churning waters that waited just beyond the bend, water that would, within minutes, carry her over Linder Falls. The horrible truth hit me instantly. Jenny Grover, five years old, was going to die... it was an irrefutable fact.

--Barry Forshaw --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

At one point in this suspense thriller a character asks, "What could be less mysterious than suffering?" Exactly. This question sums up the problem with Cook's new novel, which, like his Edgar-winning The Chatham School Affair, begins with an intriguing young woman arriving in a New England town. This time the place is Port Alma, Maine, and the woman calls herself Dora March--although we soon learn that's not her real name. As in that earlier book, the woman will have a deep and dark impact on the lives of several of the town's residents. Cook tells the story in flashbacks and sidesteps in time, beginning in 1937 with lawyer Calvin Chase's decision to give up his job as deputy district attorney to investigate the stabbing death of his beloved younger brother, Billy. Dora--the woman Billy loved--has disappeared as mysteriously as she arrived, last seen boarding a train for Portland. Unfortunately, Cook loads Cal's search for Dora with too much literary and emotional baggage, throwing out and then drawing in plot threads and jumping around in time in a manner that's sure to annoy all but the most patient readers. The narrative suffers from Dora's obvious characterization as a poster child for past child abuse, and Cal's journey from Maine to New York to California is strung out with too many jerky and misleading moves. For all his gifts as a writer, Cook has seriously overreached himself in this disappointing misfire. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

It is autumn 1937 when a mystery woman appears in Port Alma, a sea village nestled on the chilly coast of Maine. A fragile, green-eyed beauty, the woman arrives with little more than the clothes on her back and a wealth of unspoken secrets. Before a year goes by, she will flee Port Alma on the same bus that brought her there. But before she goes, she will irrevocably alter the lives of two brothers--leaving one dead, and the other perched on the edge of madness.

There is much that Dora March has hidden.

But in Port Alma, Maine, there are other secrets, too....

Places In The Dark

--このテキストは、 マスマーケット 版に関連付けられています。

"Cook is a master of sustained suspense. This brilliant evocation of how the past infects the present...lures readers into labyrinths of loss, guilt, and evil intent."
-- Booklist (starred review)

"[The story] is swept along by Cook's artistry, his insights into broken people, his austere imagery of the barren landscapes that attract them."
-- The New York Times

"Cook writes very well; his tone is sad, even foreboding, yet almost elegiac, as he weaves...an intricate fabric of tragedy."
-- The Boston Globe

Don't miss Thomas H. Cook's other award-winning works of suspense

Instruments Of Night
Evidence Of Blood
The Chatham School Affair

Winner of the Edgar for BEST NOVEL

Breakheart Hill
Mortal Memory

Available wherever Bantam Books are sold and coming soon in hardcover:

Into The Web

--このテキストは、 マスマーケット 版に関連付けられています。

Thomas H. Cook is the author of 14 previous novels and two books of true crime. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

クック,トマス・H.
「緋色の記憶」で’97年度エドガー賞(MWA Best Novel)受賞の実力派。アラバマ生まれ。ニューヨーク在住。「過去を失くした女」などのフランク・クレモンズ・シリーズが人気。ほかに犯罪ノンフィクションの分野にも関心を持つ

村松 潔
1946年、東京生まれ。国際基督教大学卒(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)