Présentation de l'éditeur
Jodi Compton’s debut,
The 37th Hour, was hailed as “compelling” (
San Francisco Chronicle), “intelligent” (
New York Times Book Review), and “the debut of a world-class mystery writer” (
Denver Post). Now Compton delivers a new novel featuring Detective Sarah Pribek, one of the most singular and complex characters in suspense fiction today.
On the streets of Minneapolis, Sarah has worked everything from vice to missing persons. But six months after the death of a small-town criminal in rural Minnesota, Sarah is still protecting the identity of a killer. And now a zealous D.A.’s investigator has come to town, determined to make an arrest. With her ex-partner half a world away and her husband in prison, only Sarah remains to face the consequences of last fall. Surrounded by colleagues who know her to be the suspect in a murder, Sarah keeps her demons at bay by involving herself in the troubles of strangers. Seventeen-year-old Aidan Hennessy was banished from his family by his father. Now Aidan’s twin sister is desperately searching for the brother she hasn’t seen in years. Although the case is out of Sarah’s jurisdiction, she sees a reflection of herself in the troubled, damaged family, and agrees to investigate.
As she probes into their tangled history, Sarah begins to realize that the mystery of the Hennessys runs deeper than it appears. Then Sarah’s lieutenant gives her a simpler assignment: Track down a doctor rumored to be practicing medicine without a license in a housing project. But in Cicero Ruiz, Sarah finds a tough, wounded survivor whose moral code challenges her own ideas about justice…and whose hard-won life would be destroyed by an arrest.
Now juggling two very different cases, both requiring a delicate balancing act between professional honor and personal feelings, Sarah soon has even more at stake. Caught up in a cat-and-mouse game with the investigator who wants to end her career, crossing one ethical line after another, Sarah increasingly fears that a misstep on her part will end not only in her disgrace, but in the death of one of those she has promised herself to protect.
With its fascinating heroine and its brilliantly interwoven mysteries,
Sympathy Between Humans is storytelling at its finest from one of the most original and daring writers in suspense fiction today.
From the Hardcover edition.
Extrait
chapter 1
It was late afternoon on Spain's Atlantic coast, the sun turning golden in the lower layers of atmosphere over the water. At the ocean's edge ran a seawall, not a barrier of rocks but a solid stone wall that broke the gentle surf. A section had been cut away to let water feed into a bathing pool, a dark-watered rectangle about half the size of a swimming pool, submerged stone benches cut all around the sides.
It was like something an ancient Roman city builder might have created, both simple and decadent. Egalitarian, as well. There were no fences, and locals seemed as welcome to come here as the well-heeled vacationers. Sunbathers came in to cool off, and children swam, darting across and back from one bench to another, like birds changing roosts in an aviary.
Genevieve Brown had brought me here, Gen who'd once been my partner in the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department. On the job she'd been measured and cautious, and I'd expected the same from her here. But she'd taken the lead, stepping down onto the bench and immediately from there into the center of the pool, tucking her knees to let the water cradle her cupped body as her dark, shoulder-length hair made a cloud around her head.
Now Genevieve sat next to me on one of the benches, her face tipped up into the sun. Her skin seemed already to be turning a warm, creamy brown. Genevieve was of Southern European extraction, and while she'd never been a sun worshipper, her skin would tan in the weakest early-spring rays.
"This is nice," I said, raising my face into the late-afternoon sunlight. Already the s
