A Detective Pursues Her Own Daughter’s Abduction in Crossing the Dark
| Crossing the Dark By Heidi W. Boehringer Serpent’s Tail, 244 pp., $14.95 |
Heidi W. Boehringer’s first novel, Chasing Jordan (2005), was a harrowing post-feminist meditation on how the modern nuclear family provides no safe haven for any of its members. The plot point she used to symbolize this systemic failure was a loving mother inadvertently causing the death of her own child. Crossing the Dark, Boehringer’s second book, now transplants the same basic theme and distaff perspective into the breezier realm of genre fiction, namely the police procedural. Once again, the lead character is a working mother — with all the mental and material insecurities inherent in that condition. But this time the mom is a recently divorced cop, and the crime around which the novel pivots is the kidnapping and serial rape of her 13-year-old daughter. Continue reading “Noir Mom”