"Until She Comes Home" by Lori Roy / Reviewed by Clay Stafford

A murder and disappearance destroy the essence of a once-respectable neighborhood in "Until She Comes Home" by Lori Roy.

Until She Comes Home by Lori Roy

Winning an Edgar for your first novel is a hard setup for your second one.  It better be good.  Lori Roy, author of her Edgar Award-winning debut novel, Bent Road, does not disappoint.  This is a spellbinding suspense novel in which a pair of seemingly unrelated murders crumbles the façade of a once respectable Detroit neighborhood.

This is a community that lives for family, church, and work.  But – like all of America in 1958 – their world is changing.  A black woman is murdered.  A white woman disappears.  Their neighborhood is falling apart.

The characters in this story are incredibly layered with special attention focused on the characters of a longsuffering pregnant wife, a social butterfly, and a woman who wishes to hide her pain behind humor.  As the characters are revealed following the murder and disappearance, jolting elements of their lives will be exposed as their individual façades also come crashing down.

The writing is well-conceived and poetic.  As the characters race to find the truth regarding the woman who has disappeared, readers will be second-guessing just like the neighbors all the way to the very end.  However, there is no end.  Even after you stop reading, the story and the theme of lives forever altered by events will stay with you.  You’ll be reflecting on it for days.

Until next time, read like someone is burning the books!

Clay Stafford

– Clay Stafford is a husband, father, author / filmmaker (www.ClayStafford.com), business owner (www.AmericanBlackguard.com), and founder of Killer Nashville (www.KillerNashville.com) with over 1.5 million copies of his own books in print in over 14 languages.  Stafford’s latest projects are the feature documentary “One of the Miracles” (www.OneOfTheMiracles.com) and the music CD “XO” (www.JefferyDeaverXOMusic.com). Publishers Weekly has named Stafford one of the top 10 Nashville literary leaders playing “an essential role in defining which books become bestsellers” not only in middle-Tennessee, but also extending “beyond the city limits and into the nation’s book culture.”  (PW 6/10/13)

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