West Heart Kill: A novel

Are Jane and Susan crying, softly?]

“Do you know what I miss? New York. The old New York. I used to love the city. Jane and I would go to restaurants, museums, theater. We had Ramsey in a public school. You could walk in Central Park after dark.

“I know it might seem odd to you. Returning to the scene…the scene of the crime, you might say. But he’s a swimmer. Long-distance. A good one. Has been my whole life. He goes farther than anyone else, from the beach around the island.”

the Jaundiced Man, you think, like some character from a tarot deck. He has abandoned the wine in favor of a double Scotch.

New England graveyard…Mayer, Garmond, Caldwell, Burr, Talbot…each character totemized by a physical trait to help you keep them apart:

People hunger for epiphany, you think, they clamor for it, but, given a chance, who among us would actually recognize it? Or, having seen it, would choose to act?

All we have, you and I, are these guilty memories of bloody crimes in which we are both complicit; for every writer is a murderer, and every reader a sleuth.

What moves a man to murder a character named after his own dead son?

“Take pictures of everything?”