Solar Eclipse

Like Dean Koontz, suspense novelist Farris (Soon She Will Be Gone, 1997, etc.) once again seems to possess a knowledge of the physical world denied to most people. No shade of light, level of heat or cold, tree, plant, type of car, gun, creature, illness, aspect of anatomy, mode of any human activity, including cooking or murder, escapes his eye or handiness to name. The solar eclipse in the title here refers to murders in Solar County, California, all turning on drugs and money. Shay Waco, divorced mother of 11-year-old Pepper, is a stunt double for Demi Moore, as well as other actresses, and over the years has learned how to take immense falls without injury. Returning from a job and some gambling in Las Vegas, Shay and Pepper go astray in a storm and find themselves near a dam. Their Chevy sports utility vehicle is rammed off the road by a pickup, falls down a 60-degree slope, and lands for a moment on a weak tree. Shay and Pepper see the pickup's driver now pushing a backhoe toward them, so they take a 70-foot freefall through black rain. Entering a nearby house to use the phone, Shay finds the entire Sinaloa family murdered at their kitchen table. The murderer, whose drug deals were being monitored by Sinaloa's eavesdropping skills, turns out to be Shay and Pepper's mysterious assailant: he wanted no witnesses who could identify his truck. Soon Shay and Sheriff Tobin Bonner find themselves bound into a cat's-cradle of death and deception. Farris at his smoothest.