Edge of Sundown, is the rare book that takes all of your expectations and turns them on their hypothetical ear. What is supposed to be a simple who-done-it, does what genre does best—it makes you think beyond the pages. Jennifer Worrell does all of this through an engaging plot and compelling characters.
Val Haverford, seems another down-on-his-creative-luck writer, world-weary and a little entitled. But it’s not vanity that drives Val as much as the past. Haunted by an abusive childhood, a tragic death, and a lifetime of burnt bridges, Val is seeking redemption.
Betrayed by his health and a faltering imagination, Val has carved out a book radically different from the sun-seared-west-and-celestial-vistas that made his reputation as an innovative master of genre. Hewn from current events—seemingly random killings that may not be random at all—Val’s newest work is more of a tortured manifesto that leaves him as uneasy as elated. Still, his publisher and friend, Graham is all-too glad for another Haverford novel, the first in a decade.
On his return to the friendly-fire of publishing and sales, Val meets Sandra. An entertainment news reporter and producer facing down her own past and present demons. Val is drawn to her warm-as-toast personality and stunning looks but as she shares her dreams, he can almost see a path beyond the past that haunts him and beyond the book he’s hinged so much of his life on.
Then, on the cusp of publication, Val’s life begins to outpace his fiction. His entire outline including the ending is dumped on the internet by an agency intern. Days later, Val is violently assaulted in his home. As disinterested as the police are in a minor isolated assault, they manage to tie it up as a random burglary.
But Val knows better. If his assailant’s words were not clear enough, the message in a missing computer and the only paper draft of his revisions is unmistakable: drop the book.
Torn between defiance and despair, Val resigns himself to walking away from the story, his redemption, and his comeback. Only a murder, too close to home compels him—first in print and then in action as an unwitting/unwilling sleuth–to follow up on his hunch. Through heartbreak and repeated betrayal Val continues to worry at the thread running through all the horror blanketing him.
But as violence spirals back around, can Val knit together the pieces of the mystery or will he become another random statistic?
While EoS is no sermon, it is unflinching and honest. Worrell delivers bill-come-due commentary. Her Chicago, at once movie-and-TV-show familiar is menacing and otherworldly. Her protagonist, Val is true blue all the more so because of his feet of clay. Hard as it is to believe, this is a first book and a great introduction to a gifted author. I can’t wait to read what comes next.
Buy Edge of Sundown here.
