Summertime Hardback - 2003

by Liz Rigbey

Just published in England, Summertime is racking up stunning reviews. "Beautifully written and wholly absorbing, with a shock denouement," hailed The Sunday Telegraph. "Very gripping (and) taut with menace," wrote the Sunday Mirror. With rights sold throughout Europe, readers on both sides of the Atlantic have a treat in store, especially those who recall Rigbey's arresting debut, Total Eclipse, which the Cleveland Plain Dealer called "a tour de force . . . sensuous, engrossing, and compelling."In Summertime, Lucy Schaffer's sane, safe life-an existence she has built to escape a painful past-suddenly falls apart when she learns of the death of her father. Authorities in Northern California say her beloved father was probably murdered, his body dumped in the sea. In this rude, unsettling homecoming, she must dive into the deep waters of her past to make sense of this recent horror and solve her father's murder. But what she remembers is foggy, incomplete, and contradictory. As she uncovers the deceptions surrounding her family's legacy of madness and murder, Lucy is forced to face the most chilling memories of her childhood: her mother's insanity, her baby brother's drowning, and the loss of her own son. Summertime is a hypnotic suspense of a high order and marks the return of one of most daring and creative new novelists of suspense.