All The Dead Lie Down
   Mary Willis Walker
  1998 Doubleday NY USA
   ISBN: 0385478585


When true-crime reporter Molly Cates' father died over 25 years ago, it was ruled as a suicide & Molly's obsessive efforts to prove otherwise cost her her marriage & her family. Now she is approaching the age at which her father died & new information has surfaced.

There are two stories weaving in & out of each other in All The Dead Lie Down. One is about Cow Lady, an indigent, hollow woman who, with help from her homeless friends, lives by her wits & hears a conversation no one was meant to witness. In her fog of misery, fear & booze, Cow Lady stumbles through her days in the raw slums hardby the Texas Capitol.

The other story is about middle-aged Molly & her one last bid to bring to justice the murderer of her idolized father. With clues & old enemies, sudden attacks of depression ameliorated by the re-awakening of her marriage, Molly too stumbles through the fog of her angst & obstinacy.

Closer & closer are the threads drawn to bring these two women together, meanwhile, in the Texas Legislature a bill constraining the Second Amendment rights is about to be passed. Among the crowds that pass through the chamber on tours, meander FBI agents trolling for threats, security guards looking for trouble & a couple of men with deadly intentions.

Mary Willis Walker has written a taut & fascinating tale. Taken us into the cesspools of slums & politicians' lies. Shone a flashlight on the tarnished souls of those who would represent us & highlighted the bright bravery of those who would defend us.

This is a gripper with a different point of view!

More from Mary Willis Walker: Zero to the Bone - winner of the Agatha & the Macavity Awards; The Red Scream - winner of the Edgar Award & Under the Beetle's Cellar - winner of the Hammett Prize, the Anthony Award & the Macavity Award.
(01/28/01)

Rebecca