The rural community of Burning Lake celebrates Halloween as a major holiday, and throngs of visitors flock to the upstate New York town's annual festival that capitalizes on the fascination with the public execution of several young women accused of being witches centuries ago. This collision of history's effect on contemporary life enhances the suspense in Alice Blanchard's gripping police procedural The Wicked Hour.
Police detective Natalie Lockhart and her fellow cops are used to drunken costumed revelers, tourists sleeping it off on sidewalks and so much trash that it takes days to clean up the town nestled in the Adirondack Mountains. But they don't expect to find the nude body of a young woman lying in a dumpster. The woman, who has an unusual tattoo and a callus under her chin, turns out to be Morgan Chambers, who had performed in the Halloween music festival, hoping to be discovered by a record producer who was supposed to attend. The 24-year-old was a violin student at a local music conservatory, from which another young woman violinist had disappeared the year before. The investigation stirs memories of Natalie's best friend, violinist Bella Striver, who allegedly left town on their high school graduation night.
This second entry in Blanchard's series weaves into the investigation a solid character study of Natalie, a shrewd detective whose anxieties, grief and guilt about her missing friend and her family's history rule her actions. Readers will better understand The Wicked Hour plot by starting with the series' first novel, Trace of Evil, which establishes Natalie's motives. A forceful look at a small town haunted by its past violence elevates The Wicked Hour. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer