"The world was short one human
being because of Jason Getty," a lonely widower and "crackerjack
wallflower" who, on a moonlit October night, was pushed too far and killed
a man who had it coming. Jason may have hidden the body, burying the corpse in
his suburban backyard, but he can't live with himself. For seventeen months, he
goes through the motions of living his life, most nights "watching through
the dining-room window for the unavoidable squad car to turn down the street
and ruin his life."
When landscapers come to do a routine clean-up of
Jason's property, they discover not one body, but two, that of a man and a
woman, buried in the flower bed in the front of Jason's house. (Uh-oh!) The guilt-ridden
nightmare of Jason's life suddenly flares. He is thrust into a harrowing investigation
to identify the two corpses--how and why they got there--and he is forced to
shed his isolated existence. Will the authorities find the third body?
Jason's destiny becomes
intertwined with a jilted woman looking for the missing pieces of her own life,
an upstanding small-town detective and his astute police dog and a mysterious
loner whose own actions and past may very well dictate the fates of all
involved.
In Three
Graves Full, Jamie Mason has crafted
an off-beat, menacing tale about a criminal with a conscience. Irony and dark humor propel
the plot in ways that reinvigorate the crime novel, revealing sharp insights
into the complexities of the human heart and mind.
Three
Graves Full by Jamie Mason
Gallery Books, $24.99,
Hardcover, 9781451685039,
320 pp
Publication Date: February 13, 2013
Please note: This review is a reprint and is
being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness:
Reader's Edition (2/15/13), click HERE.