The sleepy town of Newbury, Connecticut, is shocked when a little girl is found brutally murdered. The town's top detective, perplexed by a complete lack of leads, calls in FBI agent Leia Bines, an expert in cases involving children. Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Gram, a psychiatrist at Newbury's hospital, searches desperately for the cause of seven-year-old Naya Hasting's devastating nightmares.
Grandhi gives us a very interesting combination here… We’ve got a little bit of Caribbean folklore mixed with some Indian mysticism (I hope that’s the right term) in a story that takes place in rural(ish) Connecticut. The concept here, that young Naya is having dreams where she’s speaking to a murdered girl, could have been really unbelievable, but Grandhi makes us believe. He also does a really great job showing us the relationship between Naya and the psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Gram. Unfortunately, that ease doesn’t quite transfer to the relationship between Peter and the FBI agent, Leia. You can tell that he is trying to create some romantic tension there, but it’s not quite enough. The pacing in the book is also rather interesting, with a lot of switching back and forth between Peter’s and Leia’s stories. I think I would have preferred to stick to each storyline a little longer before switching each time, but it didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the story. One thing he does exactly right is create a very believable suspect that I was questioning until the very end. Despite those few flaws, I thought this was a great debut novel.
