From a New York Times–bestselling author, the true crime story of a Rhode Island family murdered by a Sunday school teacher. When prosperous lawyer Ernest Brendel mysteriously disappeared, along with his wife Alice, and their eight-year-old daughter Emily, friends in the close-knit Rhode Island neighborhood worried that family had been kidnapped. It would be agonizing months in a massive FBI search before they would know the heartbreaking truth. The shaken community began to lose hope that the family would ever be found alive. Their worst fears were confirmed when heavy rains from a tropical storm uncovered Alice and Ernest Brendel's badly decomposed bodies—shot with a giant crossbow, strangled, and buried in the quiet woods of the town. Lying under her mother's corpse was little Emily's lifeless body, now a silent witness to her killer's shocking identity. Like a hand pointing from the grave, the evidence led authorities to one of Ernest Brendel's closest and most trusted friends. What Ernest couldn't have known was that Christopher Hightower—a Sunday school teacher and respected member of the community—was a psychotic liar obsessed with greed, jealousy, and murderous revenge.

本作は単なる惨劇の記録ではない。ドナルド・デイヴィスが描くのは、聖職に近い立場にある「善人」が、嫉妬と強欲に蝕まれ怪物へと変貌する戦慄の心理ドラマだ。信頼という名の盾がいかに脆く、最も身近な刃によって打ち砕かれるかという、人間社会の根源的な恐怖が剥き出しにされている。 文学的な白眉は、沈黙する遺体が告発者へと転じるまでの息詰まる捜査過程と、剥がれ落ちていく犯人の虚飾の仮面だ。冷徹な筆致の中に犠牲者への深い哀惜が滲み、日常の裏側に潜む深淵を容赦なく暴き出す。正義と悪の境界が揺らぐ瞬間の衝撃を、ぜひその目で確かめてほしい。