Tangled Web UK Review July 2007
Crossing the Dark by
Heidi W Boehringer
pbk out July 07
(Serpent's Tail)
at £8.99
Perdita, the 13 year-old daughter of Florida police officer Mona Schlagel, has
been abducted and sexually abused by a vicious young criminal, her ordeal (a
hideously modern touch) recorded by video cameras. The book opens as a
baseball bat-wielding Mona confronts her daughter's contemptuous captor,
the two succesefully escaping when a diversion occurs. Soon an official police investigation
is under way, whilst Perdita and Mona are left to claw their way to some form
of accommodation with what has happened.
I doubt whether Heidi Boehringer would describe herself as a crime novelist.
Her first novel Chasing Jordan (available from Serpent's Tail) concerned a
woman dealing with a huge crisis in her life – the accidental death, by her own
hand, of her two year-old son. Mona Schlagel has to deal with a similar crisis,
this time with external factors that edge this second novel more into crime
novel territory. More importantly it also deals with a subject that is often
notable by its absence in the genre: the effect of crime on its victim and, in
this case, her immediate circle.
Mona, it transpires, has problems of her own. Not least with
Perdita's father, a breath-takingly unsympathetic asshole of an ex-husband
who has never even come to terms with Mona's own history as a rape victim.
Mona's cop partner Nick instead provides some crucial support. Meanwhile
Mona, perpetually torn between her duties as cop and her own feelings as
Perdita's mother, is tested also by the less than compassionate responsee of
society at large, the South Florida police and its education authorities, not to
mention the devastating compromises required by an unresponsive legal
system.
It is to Boehringer's great credit as a writer that despite dealing with such
issues, you are never in doubt, as first Perdita's then Mona's own personal
problems occupy centre stage, about the focus of the story. This is first of all a
raw, heart-breakingly personal story, hard-hitting, urgently and unflinchingly
written, that happens to have important things to say about the treatment of
rape in our society.
Be warned, there is no feel-good ending. But the despairing if finally
ambiguous closing pages, leave you, like good fiction should, with more
questions than answers. You won't forget this one in a hurry.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
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