Sometimes it’s a bad day for news. If you work for a newspaper, that means that nothing is happening. News and Features lounge about, trying to cobble something together, and the editor worries about what can be mustered up for page one, or for the editorial space.
On a particular December day, the staff at the Alpine, Washington, Advocate faces such a challenge, with House & Home (Vida), News desk (Mitch) and editor/publisher/heroine (Emma) discussing the dearth of options for tomorrow’s paper. Fortunately for page one, the sound of police sirens on the street alerts the newsroom, and word that an eccentric artist named Craig Laurentis has been shot and wounded quickly spreads throughout town.
Alpine is a veritable Pandora’s box of characters, and by this time (letter “V”) the author might have done well to append a cast of characters or family tree to help us cope with all the Petersons and their cousins and kin. The book’s action is oiled by quick-fire and frequently witty dialogue, with an occasional wet snowstorm thrown in to evoke the Pacific Northwest atmosphere. As the story develops, seemingly disconnected threads begin to seam together alarmingly into whole cloth. The events in Vengeance quickly prove that everything’s up for grabs as far as old murders are concerned.
