A Thorn Among the Lilies

A Thorn Among the Lilies
by Michael Hiebert
Recommended Ages: 15+

When her older daughter asks to have her future told for her birthday, Detective Leah Teal – the lead and, indeed, sole detective of the Alvin, Alabama police department – gets more than she paid for. Madame Crystalle transmits a cryptic message to her that seems to line up, detail for detail, with the evidence found on a dead body two days later. It aligns even more perfectly with a months-old case from up near Birmingham – a Jane Doe crime whose victim closely resembles the one found on the shore of Alvin's Willet Lake. It seems the tiny town of 5,000 souls has another serial killer in it, and they're not waiting long to choose their next victim.

The refreshing thing about watching Leah Teal try to crack a murder case isn't so much that she's an ace at interrogating witnesses or suspects – in fact, she's none too smooth in that area – nor that she has a keen eye for the telling detail. On the contrary, something not quite right about the evidence nags at the corner of her eye throughout this mystery, and it takes nothing particularly dramatic to bring it into focus for her. Nevertheless she plods along, getting imperceptibly closer to the solution while her 12-year-old son Abe and his goofball friend Dewey carry on a squirm-worthy side investigation of their own.

The dialogue and the plotting suffer from a bit of repetitiveness, covering some of the same ground multiple times. Nevertheless, this book keeps the reader interested by mixing a bit of light romance – a maverick detective for Leah and a nice boy for her daughter Carry – and by alternating the third-person passages mostly from Leah's point of view with Abe's hilarious first-person narrative. His "You idiot" relationship with his best friend and all their ridiculous conversations, the way they play and their innocent approach to more serious pursuits, draw you in with warmth and weirdness and light-hearted nostalgia for a time when Beetlejuice was playing in theaters and phones had cords connecting them to the wall. It isn't all G-rated innocence, though. Between Abe and Dewey's debates about tarot reading, sword fighting and Dungeons & Dragons, there are hints of danger to them that will keep you on edge. And the crimes Leah is trying to solve are really quite disturbing, drawing her into a none-too-family-friendly side of Alvin and leading to an armed confrontation with the killer.

This is the third of four "Detective Leah Teal" novels by a Canadian author, which is surprising given his ear and eye for rural Alabama detail. The other titles in the series are Dream with Little Angels, Close to the Broken Hearted and Sticks and Stones. His other works include the serialized novel The Rose Garden Arena Incident. His standalone novels include Dolls – about a girl who discovers she has the power to hurt real people by messing with paper dolls that resemble them – and Darkstone: The Perfection of Wisdom – about a Buddhist monk who moonlights as a superhero.