Friday, January 27, 2012

The Sound of a Scream-John Manning

The Sound of a Scream


John Manning

Pinnacle, Mar 6 2012, $7.99

ISBN 9780786027637



Orphan Daphne May has spent her life cloistered at Our Ladies School for Girls. Now at twenty-two years old, she leaves the convent where she met only one male in her life Father O’Donnell to ride the train to her first job as a governess in Point Woebegone, Maine. No one from Swallowtail meets her at the station, as promised. Instead a stranger takes her to a nearby inn.



Daphne is taken aback by a clown before she enters the ladies’ room to find a waitress with her throat slashed. The gruesome homicide has the townsfolk angry and anxious. Meanwhile Daphne struggles with the behavior of her eight years old charge Christopher whose grandfather was a serial killer wearing a clown costume. When the psychopath kills several more times, Daphne wonders whether somehow she was the spark that ignited a dormant serial killer.



The bloody storyline is an exciting thriller with an interesting late twist that ties the tale together. Daphne is a terrific damsel in distress whole local Gregory Winston tries to be her knight in shining armor. Although the plot is very typical of the suspense sub-genre even with a fascinating spin re the killer’s identity, fans will enjoy The Sound of a Scream in gothic aptly named Point Woebegone (no relationship to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon).



Harriet Klausner



No comments: