KEEP THE MIDNIGHT OUT - Alex Gray
For those readers who, like myself, are counting the minutes to the next Ian Rankin novel featuring Rebus we may have found a writer that can quench that desire. I confess that Alex Gray and her series featuring DCI Lorimer were not previously known to me but I was lucky to have found them --- and now have a handful of back-reading titles to add to my To-Be-Read Pile.Set in Scotland and shifting between present day and twenty years prior, KEEP THE MIDNIGHT OUT features two murders, decades apart, that bear such similarities it makes the investigator who experienced both slayings shake with fear at moment of deadly deja vu. DCI Lorimer is on holiday. Unfortunately for him his brief respite off the Island of Mull will turn into anything but a relaxing vacation. The body of a young boy is found floating in a lake near where a father and son were trying to enjoy a day of fishing.The Scottish town where this occurred was not a large one and word of the murder quickly got to Lorimer. He was particularly alarmed that the murdered boy had red hair and was bound prior to being dropped into the lake. The investigation immediately turns up evidence that the young man had been tortured. Whether or not this was done viciously and intending to inflict great pain or part of some bizarre sado-masochistic ritual was something that required further digging.
The Detective assigned to the case is Stevie Crozier. She was not at all pleased, initially, to share any part of the case with DCI Lorimer and it will take some time for her to recognize that Lorimer's knowledge of the case twenty years prior was vital to solving this present one. Lorimer realizes that, not only was the victim similar to the one he investigated twenty years earlier, but it directly signaled the fact that the same killer is behind both crimes.
Lorimer and Crozier also know that this indicates the killer is not a young man. It also pointed to the fact that the killer may have had access to or owned some sort of boat. The novel jumps back in time twenty years earlier to depict a younger and far less seasoned version of Lorimer as he works a murder case. There are also passages that come directly from the mind of the killer --- and they are quite chilling. The killer was definitely targeting young men who seemed to be homo-sexual and subjected his victims to extreme pain and suffering before he eventually killed them.
The killer in present time considers confessing but opts to stay in hiding, especially when the father of the latest victim appeared to be the main suspect due to his failure to recognize his sons proclivity for men and coming out as a homosexual. Our killer was happy to slink back into the darkness, waiting to see if Lorimer and Crozier could put the puzzle pieces together and turn their attention to him. When they finally find someone who witnessed the same man with both victims, the current one and the one from 1995, this is the break in the case they were waiting for. Now, it just would take some further investigating to find the killer --- never realizing that the killer was nearby and might very well strike first.
The novel takes its title from the final line of the story when DCI Lorimer thinks to himself: 'could his spirits rise above it all and take flight, seeing only the brightness of day to keep the midnight out'? KEEP THE MIDNIGHT OUT is well-written, atmospheric and often brooding. Alex Gray is definitely an author I will seek out again to appease my Ian Rankin fix for some terrific Scottish-based crime thrillers!
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