Product Description

Joseph Vaughan's life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1950s, he was at the centre of series of killings of young girls in his small rural community. The girls were taken, assaulted and left horribly mutilated. Barely a teenager himself, Joseph becomes determined to try to protect his community and classmates from the predations of the killer. Despite banding together with his friends as ' The Guardians', he was powerless to prevent more murders - and no one was ever caught. Only after a full ten years did the nightmare end when the one of his neighbours is found hanging from a rope, with articles from the dead girls around him. Thankfully, the killings finally ceased. But the past won't stay buried - for it seems that the real murderer still lives and is killing again. And the secret of his identity lies in Joseph's own history...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 396 pages

My Weekly
"A meaty, involving drama which will catch you up in an emotional rollercoaster -- great reading"

Review
"A meaty, involving drama which will catch you up in an emotional rollercoaster -- great reading" (My Weekly )

"Very spine chilling... keeps you going right until the last page" (Amanda Ross )

Synopsis
Joseph Vaughan's life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1950s, he was at the centre of series of killings of young girls in his small rural community. The girls were taken, assaulted and left horribly mutilated. Barely a teenager himself, Joseph becomes determined to try to protect his community and classmates from the predations of the killer. Despite banding together with his friends as ' The Guardians', he was powerless to prevent more murders - and no one was ever caught. Only after a full ten years did the nightmare end when the one of his neighbours is found hanging from a rope, with articles from the dead girls around him. Thankfully, the killings finally ceased. But the past won't stay buried - for it seems that the real murderer still lives and is killing again. And the secret of his identity lies in Joseph's own history...

Customer Reviews

A Quiet Belief In Angels
GREAT BOOK. Don't take any notice of the negative reviews. Its a very unusual "crime" novel and beatifully written. Needs time to read properly but it does grip from the beginning and the macabre content is sufficiently offbeat to make it a real page turner. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who simply likes a good story.
Christine Smythe

Powerful and sombre
This was a beautifully and methodically written crime story that didn't have to resort to plentiful gory references to set the tone. There was a real quiet intensity about it and the author really took his time in telling the story, building the tension and then finally unfolding the mystery. It was wonderfully but frustratingly wide open in terms of identifying the culprit, with so many twists and turns that I didn't see coming. I did find it creepy and oppressive at times but again that is simply a testament to the author's skill in defining the nature of this book. Definitely one to add to your reading list this year.

A voyage into hell.
This is the narrative of a journey, or rather journeys, into America, into despicable crime, into loss and gain and loss again, into dreams, ambition, love, hatred and fear. The narrator, Joseph Vaughan, takes us from his childhood in a superbly evoked Georgia to the bustling streets of Brooklyn via the hellhole of the American penal system. The story, spanning from a pre-WWII America emerging from the Depression to the shattered ideals of that nation at the end of the sixties, relates Vaughan's obessive hunt for the serial-killer of tens of children, a killer who has brought violence and pain into the Joseph's own home and family. We watch him grow, become a man haunted by his own ghosts (a major Ellory theme), and marvel at his desperate quest to both unmask the killer and retain his own sanity.
Lovers of long narratives that take their time weaving their webs, of intricate crime-stories, of rigourous yet entertaining writing, this one's for you. RJ Ellory breathes life into his descriptions of time, place and people that are quite staggering (considering he's English and his theatre of operations is America). It's a sometime's frightening story, filled with so much drama but one which leaves you with faith, inspired by the unhappy Vaughan, in human nature.