Safer

From Dirt to The Cleanup, Sean Doolittle has dazzled critics and defied expectations, garnering bolder critical raves with each new novel. “Stylishly written” hailed the New York Times Book Review… “Superb” declared the Wall Street Journal…“Heart-stopping, gut-clenching, eye-opening” raved the Chicago Tribune. Now Doolittle fulfills all that promise—and more—in his latest novel, a powerhouse of suspense that will catch you off guard at every turn.…Because in Safer, a young couple moves into an idyllic little cul-de- sac—and ignites a harrowing journey into darkness as a shocking accusation is made, a family is shattered, and the mystery of a long-ago crime begins to unravel.

For Paul Callaway and his wife, Sara, moving from the East Coast to a quiet midwestern town was a major adjustment. But right from the start, Paul has tried to fit in. He’s played golf with the guys. He’s even joined the Neighborhood Patrol, grabbing a flashlight and a walkie-talkie to make these neatly tended streets even safer. Then Paul makes one mistake—and now they want him gone. But nothing could have prepared Paul and Sara for the quarrel that has erupted between Paul and a neighbor—the self-appointed leader of the Neighborhood Patrol. Or for the next outrage, as police arrest Paul for a sordid crime he didn’t commit. Suddenly Paul’s life, university career, and marriage are at risk, as he finds himself locked in a desperate fight with an angry man, a dark conspiracy, and a secret that began with a child’s disappearance ten years before.

A good thriller need not wallow in violence and murder. That was demonstrated as long ago as 1862, when Wilkie Collins published "No Name," the second of his three great pioneering novels of suspense (the other two are "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone"). The title refers to the bastardy of its heroine, Magdalen Vanstone, and the suspense centers on her machinations to regain her late parents'... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) estate, which has been claimed by a greedy relative who is legally, but not morally, entitled to it. Can Magdalen infiltrate that relative's household in disguise and pick up information by which she might prevail? Or will the wily housekeeper see through Magdalen's masquerade?

But Collins' non-sanguinary example isn't often followed these days, when authors tend to slaughter a character in the first few pages, followed by periodic sacrifices of more gore-smeared victims, to keep the reader's attention from flagging. So this reader perked up when Sean Doolittle opened "Safer" — his fine thriller about the toll exacted by life in a security-conscious suburb — on a different note. Paul Callaway and his wife, Sara — academics who have moved from Boston to join the faculty at an Iowa university — are hosting a party when the police unexpectedly drop in. "Is something wrong?" Paul asks the officers. Plenty, as it happens. Minutes later, he is under arrest for "suspicion of the sexual exploitation of a minor." That would be Brittany, the precocious 13-year-old next door. We soon learn that the case against Paul is practically a slam-dunk: The cops have pornographic photos of him with the girl.

Bad as things may look for Paul, the reader is pretty sure he's innocent. He's the first-person narrator of the tale, after all, and a self-described "teenage book nerd in a grown man's body." His indignation at being charged with abusing Brittany seems genuine, and he has a sense of humor to boot. "Next to Boston," he observes, "the relative cost of living in Clark Falls, Iowa, seemed like a clerical mistake." Could such a practiced quipster really be a bad guy?

It soon comes out that the Callaways' across-the-street neighbor, Roger Mallory, is a troubled — and troubling — soul. A few years back, his young son was raped and murdered (yes, an early-breaking homicide, but it happened offstage), and the harrowing experience has left Roger obsessed with security. A former policeman, he founded a local Neighborhood Patrol, which has become the springboard for a movement he touts regularly on TV. Paul himself has joined the group, and not just to be neighborly. On the night the Callaways moved in, a prowler walked into the wide-open house and assaulted Sara, who escaped serious harm only because Paul returned from an errand in time to chase the guy off.

Otherwise, however, the Callaways were finding the neighborhood a good fit — until, as we learn in a flashback, Roger showed up on their doorstep a month or so before the arrest to deliver a confounding message: Paul had to go. You heard that right: Roger invoked his authority as neighborhood czar to inform Paul that he couldn't live there anymore (it says something about Roger's screwiness that his ban did not extend to Sara). Paul interprets his arrest and the obviously doctored photos of himself and Brittany as Roger's twisted way of enforcing the diktat.

Doolittle braids these elements into nerve-racking patterns. In a particularly disturbing scene, one day while Roger is out, Paul enters Roger's unlocked house to tend to the man's dog, which is in distress. Once inside, Paul looks around, opens a door and lets himself into a homegrown spy chamber, with live camera hookups to every house on the block. But when Paul calls the police to complain about the invasion of privacy, Roger calmly points out that, if Paul will check, he will see that on moving-in day he initialed a form authorizing the surveillance in the interest of — what else? — neighborhood security. To his nausea, Paul finds that Roger is right.

In the book's fourth quarter, the author loses interest in his best creation, that creepy Roger, and allows Clark Falls to become something of an abattoir after all. But the violent, formulaic finish detracts only slightly from an enthralling and unsettling story. Doolittle has written four previous novels, and "Safer" is good enough to make me want to catch up with them all.

Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle, who is the mysteries editor of The Washington Post Book World, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Sean Doolittle is the author of four novels: The Cleanup, Rain Dogs, Burn (winner of the gold medal in the mystery category of ForeWord Magazine's 2003 Book of the Year Award), and Dirt (an Amazon.com Top 100 Editor's Pick for 2001). His short stories have been collected in Plots With Guns and The Year's Best Mystery Stories 2002. He lives with his family in Omaha, Nebraska.