Sisters Lost and Found, in the Land of Shadows

Land of Shadows, Rachel Howzell Hall's latest novel, is a riveting exploration of crime and its repercussions in the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Together with her previous thriller, No One Knows You're Here , Land of Shadows proves that Hall is a star at weaving fast-paced, layered, and gripping stories. She creates an L.A. seething with tension; plots that twist and turn; and heroines bristling with intelligence, heart, and grit. Her women are street smart, sexy, and determined. Having made it through tough childhoods in L.A.'s worst neighborhoods, now they want to give voice -- and justice -- back to the places they came from.

Such a task is not for the faint-hearted -- and Hall's readers have to toughen up as well. Along with Lou in Land of Shadows, I had to face ugly facts and even uglier secrets as the plot unfolded but the writing is so good, the story so compelling, the characters so real, that I dove right in and stayed willingly submerged until the final word. Coming up for air, I was grateful for the provoking and sustaining experience of reading Hall -- and I was ready to dive right back down again. So I did, rereading Land of Shadows almost immediately in order to catch all the nuances I'd missed the first time round.

In Land of Shadows, L.A. police detective Lou Norton is called to the scene of a murder staged to look like the suicide of a teenaged girl. Lou quickly spots the grisly signs of foul play but even worse: she is launched back into memories of the disappearance of her sister Tori, when Lou was just a child. Back then, the police barely took notice of a poor black girl gone missing and her disappearance went unsolved. Lou has been nursing the pain of losing her sister for years; the sight of the murdered girl reopens the wounds with a searing vengeance. Norton vows that this time round, the victim will get the attention she deserves.

I stared into the girl's dead, half-mast eyes - 3 percent of me still believed that the last image seen by a dying person remained fixed in her eyes. 'Who did this to you sweetie?' I didn't care about the 'why.' Fuck the 'why.' I wanted to know who had taken this girl's life. Unfortunately, there were no images of that monster in her cloudy corneas. There were specks of red, though. Blood.
'That's okay, ' I whispered. 'I'll find that son-of-a-bitch.' For you. And for me.

When there is little chance that a crime or its victim will garner attention, how are the losses caused by such violence to be absorbed? There can be no closure, only disillusionment; there is no healing, only a festering of disgust. Without healing, hope becomes crippled into an emotion that aims too low: for revenge, not justice; for escape, not security; for oblivion, not understanding. Lou knows what the unsolved disappearance of her sister has cost her family and how it still haunts her own nightmares.

No matter where her current investigation leads -- into "respectable" neighborhoods or the gilded world of college basketball or Lou's own backyard, further crumbling her broken relationship with her husband -- she follows the trail with doggedness, fighting against her own painful memories to get through the web of lies created by family, witnesses, and perps. What Lou discovers in the end won't make healing easy, not for her or for the family of the girl -- but it will make healing possible. And with healing, comes a possibility of rehabilitating hope.

Kit Lyman's novel, Satan's Garden , also looks at the toll taken when a sister goes missing. Leaving aside the unfortunate title, this debut novel is engaging, provocative, and deeply moving. Two sisters are as closely twined as only sisters can be, their distinct personalities meshing together into a special bond of strength and comfort. But then Dani is kidnapped and Keely is the only witness.

When months pass with no message from the kidnapper and all clues have been followed to blank conclusions, Keely alone remains certain that her sister is alive. And she is - but for how long? While she remains imprisoned by a psychopath (who seems to know way too much about both girls), Keely becomes caught in another kind of web, one woven by society's expectations, adolescent cruelties, and the deep pain of missing her sister. Can Dani be found in time - not only to save her life but also to save Keely's sanity?

Lyman is a wonderful writer and the story she tells in Satan's Garden quickly drew me in -- I read feverishly and on the edge of my seat. The story is told in alternating chapters by first one sister, then the other, in voices that are vivid and unique. I cared about each sister so much, and found myself willing them the strength to survive while hoping against hope that time would not run out. Will one sister have to sacrifice herself to save the other? How can such a choice be made -- and yet what other choice is possible, when the life of your beloved sister is in the balance?