Ebook Download The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli
Nevertheless, reviewing the book The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli in this site will certainly lead you not to bring the published publication almost everywhere you go. Just save the book in MMC or computer disk and also they are available to review at any time. The prosperous system by reading this soft file of the The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli can be leaded into something new routine. So currently, this is time to verify if reading can enhance your life or otherwise. Make The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli it certainly work and obtain all advantages.
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli
Ebook Download The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli
The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli. Welcome to the very best site that supply hundreds kinds of book collections. Here, we will certainly present all publications The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli that you need. Guides from renowned writers as well as publishers are supplied. So, you can enjoy currently to get one by one kind of publication The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli that you will browse. Well, pertaining to guide that you want, is this The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli your option?
Exactly how can? Do you assume that you do not require adequate time to choose shopping book The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli Never ever mind! Just sit on your seat. Open your device or computer and be online. You could open up or check out the web link download that we supplied to obtain this The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli By by doing this, you can obtain the on the internet e-book The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli Checking out guide The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli by on the internet can be really done conveniently by saving it in your computer system and kitchen appliance. So, you could continue every single time you have spare time.
Reading guide The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli by on-line could be also done conveniently every where you are. It seems that waiting the bus on the shelter, waiting the listing for line up, or various other locations feasible. This The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli could accompany you in that time. It will certainly not make you feel weary. Besides, by doing this will additionally boost your life top quality.
So, simply be below, find guide The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli now as well as check out that quickly. Be the initial to review this e-book The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli by downloading and install in the web link. We have other e-books to read in this site. So, you could locate them additionally conveniently. Well, now we have actually done to supply you the very best publication to check out today, this The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli is truly ideal for you. Never disregard that you require this book The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli to make much better life. On-line book The Midnight Road, By Tom Piccirilli will actually provide very easy of everything to review as well as take the advantages.
From the moment he saw the girl in the snowstorm, Flynn had less than an hour to live. But he’ll remember his last fifty minutes long after he’s dead. As an investigator for Suffolk County Child Protective Services, Flynn has seen more than his share of misery, but nothing could prepare him for the nightmare inside the Shepards’ million-dollar Long Island home. In less than an hour, that nightmare will send him plunging into a frozen harbor—and awaken him to a reality even more terrifying.
They’ve nicknamed Flynn “The Miracle Man” because few have ever been resuscitated after being dead so long. But a determined homicide detective and a beautiful, inquisitive reporter have questions about what really happened at the Shepard house—and why the people around Flynn are suddenly being murdered. Flynn has questions of his own, especially when one of the victims dies while handing him a note: THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. Flynn has returned from the Midnight Road—and someone wants to send him back.
- Sales Rank: #1277850 in Books
- Published on: 2007-06-26
- Released on: 2007-06-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.86" h x .95" w x 4.15" l, .37 pounds
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 352 pages
Review
"Tom Piccirilli writes like a crazed banshee. I love his work."—Ken Bruen, author of The Guards and Ammunition
"Tom Piccirilli's fiction is visceral and unflinching, yet deeply insightful. If you miss Piccirilli you're missing one hell of a treat."—-F. Paul Wilson, author of The Keep and Harbingers
"Piccirilli is the master of that strange, thrilling turf where horror, suspense and crime share shadowy borders. Wherever he's headed, count me in."—Duane Swierczynski, author of The Wheelman and The Blonde
About the Author
Tom Piccirilli is the author of fourteen novels, including A Choir of Ill Children, November Mourns, and Headstone City, all available from Bantam Spectra. He has been a World Fantasy Award finalist and a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner. He lives in Denver, Colorado.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Flynn remembered the night of his death more clearly than any other in his life. The black details of it forced him from the wild slopes of his dreams back to the beginning of his pitch through the ice, down into the dark waters below and the midnight road beyond.
There'd been a moment's premonition as he drove up the long narrow curve of the Shepards' driveway to their minimansion. A faint whisper of what was to come. The storm had ended a half hour earlier, but a heavy burst of wind had rattled loose a cluster of icicles high in the canopy trees. They slammed down against his hood so hard and unexpectedly that he overreacted and jammed the brake, his dead brother's '66 Charger going into a lissome power slide. He eased off the pedal and turned the wheel directly into the spin. They were the relaxed, familiar motions of someone who'd done a lot of street racing in his youth. The positraction got the car straightened almost immediately. The tires hit a dry patch of brick and let out a squeal like an animal cry of fear.
His stomach tightened. It was the kind of bad vibe he usually made an effort to ignore. Before his death he'd been an even bigger idiot.
There were no streetlights here in this chic area of the North Shore, close to the Long Island Sound. Maybe it was a sign of wealth, having to wind your way through the night all on your own.
He looked out the frosted driver's side window, seeing the world like watching a film noir. Black and white, intensely sharp around the edges.
From the moment he saw the two pale figures wafting like white lace on the snow-filled front lawn, meeting and parting and joining again in the moonlight, he had fifty minutes left to live.
Flynn's headlights flashed across the terrain and immediately the grim nerve worked through his chest again, twitching under his heart. Late November, locked in the worst winter in a decade, night having dropped like your grandmother's velvet drapery, and there in the frozen yard were the girl and a dog prancing about, no parents in sight.
It wasn't a good sign but he didn't want to jump to conclusions. Most anonymous tips to Child Protective Services could be traced back to the neighbor across the street or on either side of the home in question. Except the Shepards had no neighbors within view. Dense lots of brush rose up
around the huge house.
It was a three-tiered home built in the late seventies when art deco was losing ground and the holdout architects were really blowing their cool. You had a nice little family residence hidden within a bunch of mortar and rock face, metal and large, well-lit empty windows like wide, blind eyes. It looked schizo as hell and Flynn couldn't imagine living in such a place, even if it did sell on the open market for a mill and a quarter, maybe a mill and a half.
The tipster had said a child was in danger at this address. No other comment. There didn't need to be one. It was all CPS needed. If somebody said a kid's welfare was at risk, you had to move. You catch the call, you take the ride, even in a snowstorm.
The girl stopped traipsing and stood at attention in her white ski suit and snow boots, watching him. The dog was a French bulldog, all white except for a black ring around one eye, wearing a white knitted sweater and little plastic booties. It sat at her heel with its chin up, head cocked, staring intently at Flynn as he stepped from his car. The only color in the world seemed to knife out from the huge windows and the twin bronzed lanterns bordering the two-car garage.
In the glow he saw the girl was about seven. A swathe of snow clung to her chin. Her breath blew white streamers that burst against his belly as he approached. The dog's breath broke across his legs.
He had to play it carefully. This was always a little tricky. If he approached the kid and she got spooked, screamed and ran into Daddy's arms, then the potential for big trouble went off the chart. You had to try to keep things easy and friendly. Just introducing himself as an investigator for Suffolk County CPS put everybody on the defensive. All kinds of hell could break loose. Fisticuffs, maybe worse. Nobody wanted to be called a child molester, not even the ones who were guilty of it.
That's one of the reasons why most investigators were women. A woman could appeal to the wife, seem less threatening to the husband. Flynn still wasn't quite sure how he wound up on the job, but one of the big perks for him was when some bitter, middle-aged ex-high-school jock who liked working over his old lady and kids decided to throw down and Flynn could cut loose. It was childish, he had to admit. But you took your action wherever you could.
Men weren't really wanted in the ranks. They had to take evaluations and psych tests semiannually to make sure they were trying to save kids for the right reasons. The shrinks had to weed out the CPS dudes who jumped out of broken marriages just hoping to find some beautiful young teen in trouble. Wanting to nurture her with poetry and bubble baths, maybe woo the mother just to make it look right on the books. The peds hunting fresh meat. Flynn came into work every day and faced cagey, cautious attitudes tossed at him all day long from nearly every corner. It pissed him off, but he tried to understand. You never knew where the next big breakdown or blowup might come from.
It was late. He should've been here over an hour ago, but the storm had hit while he was stuck in traffic on the Expressway. Nobody could get anywhere as the freezing rain came down and the slush on the road turned to ice within minutes. Even cars that weren't moving started to slip sideways into the median. Within a half hour there were a hundred fender-benders as drivers tried to roll off to the shoulder, park and wait it out. The storm didn't last long, but the freeze was so bad that everybody had to get out of their cars and start hammering away at the layers of ice on their windshields.
He didn't want to frighten the girl. She didn't really seem spookable, standing there looking at him, but he wanted to go extra easy. She took two steps through the snow, her blond hair squeezing out from around her white plastic hood, framing her cute face.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Flynn."
"I'm Kelly." Then, pointing to the dog, "This is Zero. What are you doing here?"
"I'd like to speak with your parents."
"Okay."
"Aren't you cold out here this late, Kelly?"
"Yeah," she told him. "I wanted to see the storm, but my mother wouldn't let me until it had stopped. We're about to go inside. I'd invite you in, but I'm not supposed to do that. How about if you stay right where you are until I get to the door, then you can follow, all right?"
"Sure," Flynn said.
Smart kid. Practical, even. He always got thrown by smart kids. He'd be getting ready to talk baby talk and they'd suddenly start speaking like college grads.
More icicles clattered in the trees overhead. Flynn walked back and leaned against the Charger, watching the girl make her way to the house, the small dog fighting his way through the drifts.
There were strict codes on how investigations were supposed to proceed, and he adhered to them pretty well, despite the occasional self-defensive brawls. He'd been with CPS for five years and neither his boss nor the District Attorney's Office ever gave him any static. He was proud to know in his heart he'd saved lives. He'd put child molesters behind bars. He'd gotten good people with anger issues and drug problems the help they needed.
He was the best caseworker CPS had because he didn't have much of a social life to interfere, which sort of put the whole thing into a spartan perspective, if he stopped to think about it. He rarely did.
Flynn slipped twice just stepping up to the front door.
Mrs. Shepard answered before he got a chance to stomp the snow from his shoes. Kelly stood behind her, and the dog sat behind Kelly. Flynn got the feeling he was entering a very orderly household. One of those intensely domestic homes that ran with military precision and generally creeped other people out.
Mrs. Shepard kept a flaccid smile soldered in place. She stared at him through the storm door and said, "Yes? How can I help you? What's this about?"
There were rules. Too many of them, but he did what he could to make them work to his advantage. You had to be up front. You couldn't rope anybody into anything. Couldn't sneak in and snap pictures, no matter what you saw. You had to ask to be allowed to look around the house. They could deny you. They could claim you were an intruder. They could shriek about lawyers. You tried not to shake them up too much for fear they'd take it out on the kid. The child's welfare always came first.
He told Mrs. Shepard his name and showed his identification. He explained he was with CPS and that an anonymous complaint had been registered. She nodded as if she knew all about it and let him inside. He clarified his position and asked that he be allowed to check the house. While he spoke, he casually surveyed Kelly Shepard. No bruises on her face or arms that he could see. She seemed like a regular, happy kid.
Flynn waited to register Mrs. Shepard's response. There wasn't any. The lady just kept smiling and said nothing. The bulldog sat there looking sort of humiliated to still be wearing the booties.
"Mrs. Shepard?" Flynn asked.
Finally the woman said, "Yes? What is it you want? What do you think goes on here?"
"Mrs. Shepard, as I said--"
"I'm Christina."
"Mrs. Shepard, I--"
"I just told you. I'm Christina."
She was all riptide intensity. Flynn could sense the conflicting tensions inside the woman but had no idea what they were or how they would affect him. Her smile looked scraped into her face by a fishing knife. This lady's teeth were drying out, the high gloss fading. The faint aroma of scotch trailed from her. She was maybe thirty, quite attractive, with burnished copper hair that fell in two wide, sweeping currents. The glaze in her eyes kept him from getting any kind of a real bead on her.
Now might come the questions, the defensiveness. She might grab Kelly and hold the kid out in front of her like an offering. Some of them did that. Some parents stripped their children in front of Flynn to prove there were no bruises. Some broke down and dropped to the floor. Some went for a kitchen knife. You never knew what might be coming next.
He'd given the spiel he was supposed to give. He'd amended it a bit to make it sound like he had a little more authority than he actually did. If he snapped the sentences out fast enough, he came off like a cop with a court order. It was good to lay it down on the line as hard as he could. It set the parameters and usually let him know which way things would go. Whether they'd confess or go for the shotgun in the closet.
He waited, feeling the current riding up his back. He knew she'd be different, that she was going to pull something new here.
"Would you like some tea?" she asked.
There it was. That was a first. No one had ever offered him tea before. "No thank you," he said.
"How do we proceed?"
"Do you have any other children?"
"No, Kelly is our only one."
"I'd appreciate a tour of your home."
"And what will that prove? If I'm beating my child to the point that a neighbor--the nearest of whom lives several hundred yards away--can hear her screams, wouldn't she be battered? Are you looking for pools of blood?" The smile had downshifted into an almost amiable grin, except it was way too wide.
"I'm just doing an on-site evaluation. It's very standard."
"Not for me it isn't."
"I realize that. I'm very sorry, Christina, but once a complaint has been lodged we have to follow up."
"This late? It's almost Kelly's bedtime."
"The storm kept me. Again, I apologize for the intrusion."
Christina Shepard was given to dramatic movements. Swinging herself around and gesturing with her hands like she was scrawling signatures in the air. Kelly and the dog intuited her motions and stepped along with her, keeping just behind her. It was a weird kind of ballet he was watching, the three of them so gracefully maneuvering around in the front hallway.
"All right," she said, giving him the thousand-watt leer again. "Let's take a tour of my home."
She walked him through it, all three floors. She offered to open drawers even though he said it wasn't necessary. She opened them anyway. Her hostility came off her in waves, the way he expected. But there was something more there. Flynn couldn't figure out what it might be, and his curiosity was really starting to bang around inside him. He stared at the side of her face as she led him from room to room, propping open armoires and dressers.
She put her hands on him only once, gripping him by the upper arm and steering him toward the master bedroom's private bathroom. This lady had some serious muscle. He felt her coiled strength and the furnace of her agitation. She opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed a handful of pill bottles and started reading off labels. "Zyrtec, this is for allergies. Flexeril is a muscle relaxant for my husband, Mark, who has a bad back. Zoloft is medication for depression. I suffer from it. Surely that's not a crime."
"No, it's not," he said.
"Thank God for that. Would you like to speak to my daughter? Ask her questions?" The mask slipped another notch as she called for Kelly. The girl and the dog paraded into the bedroom like Marines landing on a foreign beach. "Foul questions, no doubt. What kind of a man wheedles his way into working with children every day, Mr. Flynn? What thoughts go through your piggy mind?"
He let it slide. She had a head full of serpents herself, he decided. He'd heard a lot worse on the job and Christina Shepard didn't seem angry with him so much as she appeared flush with clashing forces.
Flynn turned to the girl and said, "Kelly, I work for people who look after children in case someone is hurting them. Maybe even a friend or someone in the family. It happens sometimes. Do you have anything you want to say to me?"
Most helpful customer reviews
39 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Thanks, Tom!
By Christine Menendez
There are two writers extant who can bring me to tears, to real
laughter, and sometimes, to screaming in frustration or anger. One
of them is Tom Piccirilli. When I first picked up The Midnight
Road, I remembered, at once, the very first line of the book from a
little taste given at the back of his last novel, The Dead Letters:
"Flynn remembered the night of his death more clearly than any
other in his life." Wow! And, of course I read through that little
taste and decided Ihad to stay alive for another year or so to
finally read the entire book. Which I have. Twice. Wow!
This is the story of Flynn, a forty year old man who carries enough
grief and pain and regret to fuel an entire city. Everyone he loved
died, but the worst death was that of his brother, thirty years
gone. Flynn still drives the Charger in which is brother and
girlfriend met their ends. He is a deeply flawed, deeply empathetic
man who works for Child Protection Services just to try and ease or
prevent yet more suffering. Too many people think that a guy
working for CPS is a potential pederast, and don't look kindly on
him. In trying to save a child and her naked and scarred autistic brother who was locked in a
cage from their nutsoid gun-toting mom, Flynn gets to die. For
twenty-eight minutes. (not a record!) After that, everything goes
downhill. People start falling dead around him, and the cops think
he's involved. Which he is, but not in the way they think. So he
has to find out what's going on.
Good story. Terrific story, in fact, studded with all kinds of
oddities. Like the ghost dog who died along with Flynn and then
came back to haunt him, still wearing plastic booties and a
sweater. Like Flynn's boss, Sierra, whose face is full of
reconstructive plastic. But the best thing, the very best, is the
writing itself and all those terrible emotions it conjures up.
There is something so very natural, so unforced and lacking
contrivance about Piccarilli's writing that you just fall into it.
You know that this is real: this is how people would think and talk
and act. This is how it would go down in the world off the page.
This is not a writer inventing stuff, this is somebody telling you
how it is. It is that simple, and that amazingly good.
And Piccirilli is really funny. Don't know why more people don't
respond to that outrageous humour which is sometimes very subtle,
sometimes very black, and sometimes absolutely silly. It gives a
wonderful balance to all of the pain and misery which his
characters have to endure.
And this is why his writings can make me cry and laugh and steam
with anger. He has that very rare ability to encite real emotional
response in the reader, to render his characters so very alive
that they walk off the page and into your thoughts. You may finish
the book and put it down, but you will never forget it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
There may be no better writer of noir crime thrillers (spoilers?)
By W. D. Gagliani
There's just no stopping Tom Piccirilli. His novels tend to grab you where it hurts the most and not let go, not even when you've read the last page. His blending of noir crime, thriller, and horror elements is brilliant and only enhanced by a creeping sense of dark, playful humor often delivered in such deadpan it's easy to miss. For instance, Headstone City echoes Hamlet, The Sixth Sense, and The Sopranos, all with a wink. Piccirilli molds disparate elements to his will with enviable ease.
With The Midnight Road, Piccirilli invents yet another disturbed protagonist. Flynn works for NY Child Protective Services, a thankless job but satisfying to his crusader mentality. But he's haunted by his own ghosts - for instance his rebel-without-a-cause brother, who died behind the wheel when Flynn was a child. Following up on an anonymous call on a stormy night leads him to a strange household scenario, which in turn leads to a shooting, a drowning, and Flynn's "death" in his brother's restored Charger once it plunges into the frozen harbor. He's brought back to life, a true "Miracle Man." Of course, he does not return without company, and a new set of problems.
Now haunted not only by his past but also his present, Flynn becomes the target of a mysterious assassin who sends the message "This Is All Your Fault" and kills the messenger in front of him. Considered a suspect by hard-nosed cop Raidin, yet clearly not guilty, Flynn is also pursued by Jessie Gray, an attractive but hardened reporter who gets close to him but mostly seems to just want the story. In turn, he pursues a childhood acquaintance with issues of her own, who was there with Flynn the day his brother and her pregnant sister embraced their non-destiny as a James Dean blaze of glory. A film noir aficionado, he seems stuck inside a film noir plot - or many of them - with its use of the femme fatale, tough cop, bleak situation, dark quest, and suspect motivations. As in film noir, things (and people) aren't always what they seem. You can't help thinking Hitchcock would have loved to make this movie, then you can't help suspecting he did -- and Piccirilli is paying homage to those films he loves the best.
Piccirilli's work is always challenging and surreal in some respect, and here the film noir-inspired surreal roots find purchase in the black and white world in which Flynn travels, black Charger (the death car) superimposed on a stark white snowy background. Indeed, the entire novel is filled with contrasting white on black or black on white images, and you know these things don't just happen. Piccirilli manipulates the conventions of noir until they form a completely new medium, a sort of printed "film" noir which grabs you with the stark imagery it projects onto your psyche. Bleak yet hopeful, tragic yet somehow inspiring, dark and light at the same time, The Midnight Road is another triumph from the pen of a writer who makes these things look easy when we know they aren't.
--W.D. Gagliani, author of Savage Nights
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Another Great Novel From The Pic Man
By Kindle Customer
If you haven't read Piccirilli, this is as good a place to start as any. As in a lot of Pic books, the mean, nasty and dark sides of life (And death) are written in an absorbing way that forces you to read on late into the night, regardless of your plans for the next day.
The main character, Flynn, is heading toward a strange house in the middle of a snow storm, only to encounter a nutty woman with a mentally challenged man kept in a cage in the basement. From there the story gets weirder and more intense, involving murders, fights, and the ghost of a dead dog that constantly talks to Flynn ... Yes, I said a talking deceased dog.
This has mystery, suspense, a splash of noir, and action, which, when all mixed together, will definitely put this book on your favorite list of Pic's works. I've been reading this guy for a while now, and whether The Midnight Road is your first time reading him, or another in a line of his reads, it will not be your last story read by this writer.
Piccirilli's flawless writing style and gift of totally getting your head in to the story, will keep you turning pages and have you guessing up to the very end. If you're a fan of Pic and liked Headstone City, The Cold Spot, or the brilliant November Mourns, trust me when I say you could do a lot worse than to pick up a copy of The Midnight Road.
I don't have to end this review by saying to enjoy this one, because you will regardless of your reading tastes. And if you like horror, be sure to check out Pic's earlier books: The Night Class, The Deceased, Hexes, and A Choir of Ill Children-you can't go wrong with a writer of this caliber.
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli PDF
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli EPub
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli Doc
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli iBooks
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli rtf
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli Mobipocket
The Midnight Road, by Tom Piccirilli Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar