IDYLL HANDS: A Thomas Lynch Novel

Fiction

Painful secrets

IDYLL HANDS

A Thomas Lynch Novel

By Stephanie Gayle

304 pp. Seventh Street Books

Stephanie Gayle is back with the third entry (the previous entries are also reviewed on this site) in her Thomas Lynch mystery series set in late 1990s New England and featuring a compelling hero cop protagonist with a refreshing twist.

After serving for 15 years as NYPD detective, Thomas Lynch left the mean streets of New York City to become the police chief of the quaint, quiet, affluent, and aptly named New England town of Idyll, Connecticut. Unlike most cops, Lynch has a secret – one that could derail his career in law enforcement.

Thomas Lynch is a gay man working in a profession that’s traditionally homophobic – fiercely homophobic. The town’s none too bright and intolerant mayor already made it clear to him that he was only hired because of his impeccable record with the NYPD.

So, afraid of being fired for the slightest reason, (and living and working in a conservative small town) publicly, Lynch remains deeply closeted. Privately, his family loves and accepts him, and he has a new boyfriend, but by forcing them both into the closet, he’s straining their relationship to the breaking point.

Far from the stereotypical gay guy, Lynch is a big hulk of a man. Intelligent and dedicated, tough yet compassionate, he takes pride in being a damn good cop. As Idyll Hands opens in May of 1999, he already outed himself privately to his detectives, for his own peace of mind. Most of them don’t care that he’s gay.

A few deeply resent having a gay police chief, but are willing to cut Lynch some slack because he’s a good cop. One of them is Detective Michael Finnegan, a nearly thirty-year veteran of the force who comes from a homophobic, conservative Irish Catholic background. He has a secret, too – a painful one.

In September of 1972, Finnegan’s baby sister Susan, then sixteen, left home to sleep over at her best friend’s house. She was never seen or heard from again. At the time, Michael was a young rookie cop on the force barely a year. Fearing that it would look bad for him to immediately file a missing person report on a girl with a history of running away, he waited.

After the family’s desperate search for Susan turned up nothing, he filed the report, but by then, he feared it was too late. They never knew what happened to Susan. Then, in 1983, while investigating a routine complaint, Finnegan found a broken watch and an old, dirty skirt in the woods – along with a human bone. Fearing that he stumbled onto what was left his sister’s remains, but unable to prove it, he’s been tortured by guilt all these years.

The bone languished in the police evidence room for sixteen years – just another cold case. Until now. A human skeleton has been discovered in the same woods – the skeleton that Finnegan’s bone belongs to. The skeleton of a teenage girl who had been savagely murdered.

A DNA test rules out Finnegan’s sister as the victim. Denied closure yet again, he determines to deliver justice to the family of this young victim, whom they identify as Elizabeth Gardner, a 19-year-old girl who had been trying to escape her controlling and abusive older boyfriend.

While they work the Gardner homicide, despite their rocky relationship, Thomas Lynch offers to help Michael Finnegan investigate his sister’s disappearance. Lending a hand is fellow detective Lewis Wright, who’s dealing with some painful issues of his own; his wife, unexpectedly pregnant again late in life, has just learned that her unborn child has Down syndrome.

As Lynch, Finnegan, and Wright work two different cases at the same time, they find eerie parallels between them. The trail of clues leads them into dark territory, including a possible serial killer at large and the involvement of organized crime. Finnegan must come to terms with his sister’s troubling secrets and his own prejudice in order to bring down a depraved murderer…

Unlike the previous two novels in the series, which are narrated solely by the main character, Idyll Hands features alternating first person narration by Thomas Lynch and Michael Finnegan, which is well done and makes for a nice contrast of points-of-view, but I prefer Lynch as sole narrator.

Still, it’s a great read and a haunting, riveting story. Stephanie Gayle just gets better and better with each novel in one of the best modern mystery series there is. Highly recommended to open-minded mystery fans!

Eric Petersen is an administrator and blogmaster for the Internet Writing Workshop, an international, online writer’s group run out of Penn State University. You can reach him by e-mail at EricPetersen1970@hotmail.com