cover image THE YEARE'S MIDNIGHT

THE YEARE'S MIDNIGHT

Ed O'Connor, . . Carroll & Graf, $24 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-7867-1028-7

First-time novelist O'Connor scores points for his inventive premise—which marries the poetry of John Donne with cold-blooded serial murders—even if other elements of his psychological thriller are not quite as fresh. Populated with some stock characters—the glum, disillusioned detective; the brilliant but deranged killer; the beautiful lady professor (with thick hair and a firm handshake) recruited to help the police—O'Connor's story traces a frenzied police investigation launched after gold medal–winning swimmer Lucy Harrington is found murdered in her home near the small English town of New Bolden. Harrington's left eye has been removed, and a snippet of a poem by Donne left scrawled on her bathroom wall in blood. Brooding Det. Insp. John Underwood and his team enlist the aid of Cambridge guest lecturer Dr. Heather Stussman, a poetry expert who's already been contacted by the Donne-obsessed killer, Crowan Frayne. The investigation isn't helped by the embittered Underwood going to pieces over wife Julia's infidelity and estrangement. Unfortunately, O'Connor shows us nothing of Underwood's earlier, presumably happier life with Julia; all we get to see is his slide into despair, vindictiveness and madness. The resulting portrait, though viscerally potent, feels unbalanced. O'Connor writes with stylish, clipped prose and an assured pace, and his dialogue can be pithy (when Stussman asks a condescending senior professor his opinion of her controversial new book, he tells her, "I thought your naïveté was endearing"). Still, the novel is hurt by its abrupt, muddled ending and strangely literal-minded take on Donne's oeuvre. (May)