Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie mysteries were my reading passions when I was young, and I still enjoy an occasional fast-paced whodunit, especially during the summer months. I’m a sucker for strong stories that keep me up late at night, eager to see what happens next. That said, sometimes I find the characters in genre fiction a tad, well, generic.
That’s not the case with “The Night the River Wept” (Sourcebooks Landmark, $16.99), the sophomore novel by Lo Patrick, the pen name for the former Atlanta attorney who made her 2022 literary debut with “The Floating Girls.”
Patrick has created some delightfully indelible characters in this engrossing new mystery that defies expectations.
The tragedy at the heart of the tale is the 20-year-old unsolved murder of three little brothers from the wrong side of the tracks in the fictitious small town of Faber, Georgia, and the suicide two weeks later of the chief suspect.
The mystery becomes the obsession of 24-year-old Arlene Ridell who desperately wants to be a mother and is grieving over her recent miscarriage. A true crime fan, she seeks distraction by getting a part-time job bagging evidence at the Faber Police Department, and her randy boss, Capt. Larson Gamble, agrees to let her look into the case.
Arlene is a hoot of a character. Due to her youth and inexperience, she is a coltish contradiction of competing thoughts and desires who’s still trying to figure out who she is. One of the ways she does that is glomming onto older, more self-assured women and mimicking them. She could be annoying if it weren’t for her comically candid outlook on life. Patrick does a remarkable job balancing a serious, sober approach to the murders with Arlene’s humorous observations about her cohorts that manage to feel organic and unobtrusive.
To help her solve the murders, Arlene enlists the reluctant help of Ronna, the police department’s rigid, reticent receptionist. Ronna is a frequent source of humor for Arlene, despite her admiration for the older woman. She alternately describes Ronna as having “the demeanor of a big rig truck trying to make it up a steep incline” and “holding her upper body like she was carrying a refrigerator.”
Arlene also recruits Alaina, a close friend of the well-to-do family of the murder suspect/suicide victim, Mitchell Wright. Intent on proving Mitchell’s innocence, Alaina had gotten herself hired by the police department to help solve the case shortly after the deaths, but she had long since resigned without solving the case.
Charmed by Alaina’s life as a content single woman in her 60s living in an antiques-filled Victorian home, Arlene starts to see her marriage to Tommy, a successful commercial real estate agent and burgeoning alcoholic, in a new light.
“I was going to have an entire new personality by the end of this,” Arlene observes. “Alaina’s grit and Ronna’s straightforwardness were mine to seize, and I wanted them.”
About halfway through the novel, Patrick makes the killer’s identity apparent, so the mystery becomes not so much a whodunit but a question of what was the killer’s motivation, and who knew the killer’s identity but never reported it. Complicating matters is the fact that everyone in Faber seems to be harboring secrets, especially Ronna and Alaina.
Ultimately, the pieces of Patrick’s puzzle don’t come together as neatly as one might like, but that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of spending time with these unique and finely wrought characters in their quest for justice. I don’t know if Patrick has a series in mind, but I wouldn’t mind spending another sleepless night or two reading about the further exploits of Arlene Ridell.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.
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