Rest Now, Beloved

Two different cover-ups 60 years apart drive Lee’s lackluster debut. In San Diego, Calif., in 1933, the body of missing seven-year-old Christopher Abkhazian, a pastor’s son, surfaces in San Diego Bay. Jurisdictional conflicts, misinformed reports, and egotistical battles eventually cause the case to be forgotten—that is, until 1993, when the San Diego Observer runs an article detailing the closing of the case. Pete McGraw, the former lead investigator, who’s now a recovering alcoholic with cancer, challenges it, calling it a second cover-up. Sera Schilling, an investigative reporting intern at the Observer, teams with Pete to revisit every part of the case and find out who would want to cover it up decades later. Lee does a good job evoking San Diego’s rich culture, but her intertwining of past and present fails to generate much momentum. Only the climax delivers any real suspense. (BookLife)