Girl in the Dark

Lawyer Iris Kaselstein, the heroine of Dutch author Pauw’s intriguing if flawed U.S. debut, is having a hard time managing her workload while fulfilling her responsibilities as a single mother to her three-year-old son, Aaron. Aaron’s aggressive behavior in day care forces Iris to interrupt a conference with a client, Peter van Benschop, who’s facing civil charges for using an underage teenager in a porn film. Meanwhile, Ray Boelens, an inmate convicted of stabbing his neighbor Rosita Angeli and her four-year-old daughter, Anna, to death, before stubbing a cigarette out on the little girl’s corpse, consistently maintains his innocence. Finally, Iris learns by chance that Ray is her older brother, and she agrees to advocate for him. Her natural questioning of her mother’s choice to keep Ray’s existence a secret leads to serious tension between them. The truth about Rosita and Anna’s deaths may surprise some readers, but even they may view it as a contrivance. [em]Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management (Feb.) [/em]