Romanian E.O. Chirovici's first novel written in English is a psychological thriller about a murder investigation reopened years after it happened. The Book of Mirrors uses varying points of view to demonstrate, as Chirovici says on his website, "the human mind's capacity to cosmeticize and even falsify its recollections."
Literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial manuscript for Richard Flynn's firsthand account of events leading up to--but ending just before--the murder of charismatic professor Joseph Wieder. Katz tries to contact Flynn but discovers that he died weeks earlier. Frank Spoel was convicted of Wieder's murder, but the partial manuscript seems like a confession, or perhaps a revelation of the true murderer. Katz is compelled to learn how the story ends, and hires investigative journalist John Keller, who ferrets out those closest to the case--finding out that while they may have been involved in the same event, everyone's perceptions are quite different "The boundaries between fiction and reality don't exist, or else they're very slender." He tracks down Spoel (still in prison), as well as Derek Summers (handyman for the murdered professor) and Lauren Baines (the professor's mysterious protégée and Flynn's love interest). He recruits the original police investigator, Roy Freeman, to examine the case anew, but what Keller and Freeman piece together leads to a surprising and sorrowful conclusion.
With language both direct and fresh, and a plot full of unexpected twists, Chirovici illustrates the rash consequences of taking action when memories are so deceiving. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.