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Canadian Authors - Mystery - |
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A Hemorrhaging of Souls |
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 A Hemorrhaging of Souls byNicola Furlong Salal Press 288 pages, 1998 ISBN 1894012011 Reviewed by Nancy Mehl Nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award in the Best First Novel category, April 2000. Read our interview with the author by Charlotte Austin Softly, softly, let us carry on With our vengeance; The one who least expects it Will be its prey. -Chorus, Act 1 – RIGOLETTO Dr. Tempest Ivory, a child psychologist, is called in to consult in the suicide of a young girl at The Academy of the Sisters of the Perpetual Soul, located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Tempest knows quite a bit about suicide. She has attempted it herself – and her mother and brother were both victims to its vicious, deadly power. Constable Patrick Painter oversees the investigation of the child’s death. Although the circumstances are unfortunate, he believes Amelia took her own life – until another child is discovered dead in the very same manner and a bouquet of shamrocks is found at the feet of the second young girl, just like the ones left near Amelia. Tempest and Patrick begin to uncover disturbing facts about the life of Amelia Penderghast. Dark, disgusting secrets that seem to reach from beyond the grave and claw viciously at Tempest’s own soul. As Patrick and Tempest get closer to the truth, the past begins to intertwine them together in a complicated dance of adultery, murder and madness. And as Tempest, also a talented operatic soprano, prepares to step into the shoes her dead mother once filled – the role of Gilda in Rigoletto - she begins to see the similarities between the disturbing opera and her own life. A Hemorrhaging of Souls gathers force like an emotional hurricane – picking up broken lives, shattered hopes, and deadly fears, and shaping them into a powerful plot that finally explodes, leaving the reader to discover what has been blown away and what remains. Furlong is masterful in her portrayals of the tortured souls that exist inside her complicated and intricate characters. |
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