When the Stars Go Black a Tough Detective Novel

 

 

 

 

WHEN THE STARS GO DARK

By Paula McClain

Random House, 384 pages.

★★★★

 

Paula McClain is one of literature’s finest storytellers. When Stars Go Dark draws inspiration from a dark incident from 1993: the disappearance of 12-year-old Polly Klaas from her home in Petaluma, California. McClain uses that horrific incident to build a fictional tale that reminds us that high-profile cases often have the unintended effect of drawing interest away from those that don’t get as much media attention. They can blind investigators to smaller pieces that assemble a larger puzzle, or tempt them to force-fit ones that don’t match.

 

Detective Anna Hart, McClain’s protagonist, has numerous blinders of her own. She founded the Searchlight program that specializes in seeking missing girls, but fails to see how her obsession has made a hash of her personal life, or that deep-seated baggage bleeds into her work. Anna is tough and resilient, but prone to hard crashes. She is in Mendocino, where she came of age, as she and her husband need a break from each other. McClain drops hints about why this is the case, but skillfully dribbles out the details. We do know, though, that Anna’s crusty exterior formed when her mother died of a heroin overdose and young Anna and her siblings were separated by Child Services. Anna did not take well to foster care until she landed in Mendocino, where she was taken in by Hap and Eden, back-to-the-land naturalists. Hap taught her about surviving in the woods, where Anna also found solace.

 

Anna’s plan is to play hermit in a remote cabin and reevaluate a life filled with “heavy loss.” The first problem with that plan is that people remember her in Mendocino; the second is that a subteen girl named Cameron Hague has gone missing and it sure looks as if Sheriff Will Flood is out of his depth in searching for her. Several complications: Will was an old flame, Anna’s breasts are milk-swollen, she often zealously oversteps boundaries, and Cameron’s parents, Emily and Troy, are show business people seeking to avoid publicity. In situations such as this, parents are often the first suspects, plus the marriage is rocky, Cameron was adopted, and Troy’s brother Drew–now a vintner living in a palatial home in Napa–has a dodgy past (involving an underage girl) and is a pretentious jerk in the present.

 

As Anna pries, the dead-case unsolved murder of Jenny Ledford comes to light, as does the more recent disappearance of Shannon Russo and that of Polly Klaas. Are the four cases related? Russo, an older bad girl type, seems a different scenario, but Anna wants to check out everything, whether or not it’s her call. Nothing seems to add up, including the fact that Emily Hague flunked her polygraph test.

 

This is a gripping novel that pulls on the heart strings, albeit sometimes too tightly and too obviously. Like most detective/mystery tales, this one involves meticulous clue-searching, probing into the backgrounds of both the missing and suspects, tossing out rotted red herrings, and building to a carefully protected reveal. When the Stars Go Dark is also complicated by Anna’s own woes, things about Cameron about which her adopted parents were unaware, and a town filled with offbeat characters. Several of the last, including a psychic, ageing hippies, an artist, an English teacher, and a barmaid factor into the story. So too do dysfunctional families of several sorts.

 

In addition to the obvious metaphor of light being prematurely extinguished, the title also owes something to a poetry collection of the same name published by Jim McGarrah in 2009. Rilke, however, is our chief poetic suspect. In McClain’s novel, Anna, Cameron, and perhaps McClain herself are Rilke fans, especially of his poem “I Am Much Too Alone in This World Yet Not Alone.” As the title suggests, it’s also infused with double meanings. Cameron is also moved by Jane Eyre. Another clue?

 

I am usually a fan of mysteries in which the lead investigator is flawed rather than some know-it-all bafflegab who sees what no one else can. Anna Hart definitely falls into the first category and forces us to contemplate obsession as a double-edged sword. I also prefer those that ring true over the anodyne. I would not say that mystery is McLain’s métier, but When the Stars Go Dark is a welcome (albeit unsettling) digression.  

 

Rob Weir