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One night, university professor Serene Ransom meets up with a young bartender, Catch Clancy. Murder soon ensues and the two quickly become a couple, heading for Ransom’s home in Minnesota, where she has unfinished business. There, they fall into a spiral of sex, violence and insanity, which is to put them on a collision course with homicide detective Paris Murphy. However, Murphy has more than a few problems on the home front, with her marriage looking shaky and her father ill. Is this case too big for her? For me, this was a novel that did not seem to ring true. As a general rule, the reader is able to understand the motivation behind killers, even if we are repulsed and reviled by them. Monsour provides plenty of motivation for her murderous duo, but they failed to come alive for me and remained unrealistic from the start, meaning that the entire novel did not come together. Monsour tells us parts of the story from different perspectives, allowing us into the mind of Clancy or Ransom, but this was not enough to generate realism. It is, however, interesting to see what each character thinks of the other, and how the spiral of violence ebbs and flows. As ever, Monsour paints a picture of a Paris Murphy who is determined to succeed at her job, despite the pressures on her. Like many cops, it seems that her home life is neglected and has to suffer and this makes her an appealing character. However tough her exterior may be, she is also vulnerable, which makes her more realistic. It seems that Paris Murphy has plenty of stories to tell and we will no doubt be hearing from her again soon. DARK HOUSE is a decent enough thriller, but I feel that Murphy’s previous novel COLD BLOOD was much better.
Reviewed by Luke Croll, January 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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