Darkness, My Old Friend

Darkness, My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger
Darkness, My Old Friend

Darkness, My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

eBook

$8.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Lies and Fragile returns to The Hollows, delivering a thriller that explores matters of faith, memory, and sacrifice.
 
After giving up his post at the Hollows Police Department, Jones Cooper is at loose ends. He is having trouble facing a horrible event from his past and finding a second act. He’s in therapy. Then, on a brisk October morning, he has a visitor. Eloise Montgomery, the psychic who plays a key role in Fragile, comes to him with predictions about his future, some of them dire.

Michael Holt, a young man who grew up in The Hollows, has returned looking for answers about his mother, who went missing many years earlier. He has hired local PI Ray Muldune and psychic Eloise Montgomery to help him solve the mystery that has haunted him. What he finds might be his undoing.

Fifteen-year-old Willow Graves is exiled to The Hollows from Manhattan when six months earlier she moved to the quiet town with her novelist mother after a bitter divorce.  Willow is acting out, spending time with kids that bring out the worst in her. And when things get hard, she has a tendency to run away—a predilection that might lead her to dark places.

Set in The Hollows, the backdrop for Fragile, this is the riveting story of lives set on a collision course with devastating consequences. The result is Lisa Unger’s most compelling fiction to date.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307465191
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 08/09/2011
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
Sales rank: 107,276
File size: 8 MB

About the Author

About The Author
Lisa Unger is an award-winning New York Times and international bestselling author. Her novels have sold over one million copies in the U.S. and have been translated into twenty-six different languages.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Jones Cooper feared death. The dread of it woke him in the night, sat him bolt upright and drew all the breath from his lungs, narrowed his esophagus, had him rasping in the dark. It turned all the normal shadows of the bedroom that he shared with wife into a legion of ghouls and intruders waiting with silent and malicious intent. When? How? Heart attack. Cancer. Freak accident. Would it come for him quickly? Would it slowly waste and dehumanize him? What, if anything, would await him?

He was not a man of faith. Nor was he a man without stain on his conscience. He did not believe in a benevolent universe of light and love. He could not lean upon those crutches as so many did; everyone, it seemed, had some way to protect himself against the specter of his certain end. Everyone except him.

His wife, Maggie, had grown tired of the 2:00 a.m. terrors. At first she was beside him, comforting him: Just breathe, Jones. Relax. It’s okay. But even she, ever-patient shrink that she was, had started sleeping in the guest room or on the couch, even sometimes in their son’s room, empty since Ricky had left for Georgetown in September.

His wife believed it had something to do with Ricky’s leaving. “A child heading off for college is a milestone. It’s natural to reflect on the passing of your life,” she’d said. Maggie seemed to think that the acknowledgment of one’s mortality was a rite of passage, something everyone went through. “But there’s a point, Jones, where reflection becomes self-indulgent, even self-destructive. Surely you see that spending your life fearing death is a death in and of itself.”

But it seemed to him that people didn’t reflect on death at all. Everyone appeared to be walking around oblivious to the looming end—spending hours on Facebook, talking on cell phones while driving through Starbucks, reclining on the couch for hours watching some mindless crap on television. People were not paying attention—not to life, not to death, not to one another.

“Lighten up, honey. Really.” Those were the last words she’d said to him this morning before she headed off to see her first patient. He was trying to lighten up. He really was.

Jones was raking leaves; the great oaks in his yard had started their yearly shed. There were just a few leaves now. He’d made a small pile down by the curb. For all the years they’d been in this house, he’d hired someone to do this work. But since his retirement, almost a year ago now, he’d decided to manage the tasks of homeownership himself—mowing the lawn, maintaining the landscaping, skimming the pool, washing the windows, now raking the leaves, eventually shoveling the snow from the driveway. It was amazing, really, how these tasks could fill his days. How from morning to night, he could just putter, as Maggie called it—changing lightbulbs, trimming trees, cleaning the cars.

But is it enough? You have a powerful intellect. Can you be satisfied this way? His wife overestimated him. His intellect wasn’t that powerful. The neighbors had started to rely on him, enjoyed having a retired cop around while they were at work, on vacation. He was letting repair guys in, getting mail, and turning on lights when people were away, checking perimeters, keeping his guns clean and loaded. The situation annoyed Maggie initially—the neighbors calling and dropping by, asking for this and that—especially since he wouldn’t accept payment, even from people he didn’t really know. Then people started dropping off gifts—a bottle of scotch, a gift certificate to Grillmarks, a fancy steakhouse in town.

“You could turn this into a real business,” Maggie said. She was suddenly enthusiastic one night over dinner, paid for by the Pedersens. Jones had fed their mean-spirited cat, Cheeto, for a week.

He scoffed. “Oh, yeah. Local guy hanging around with nothing to do but let the plumber in? Is that what I’d call it?”

She gave him that funny smile he’d always loved. It was more like the turning up of one corner of her mouth, something she did when she found him amusing but didn’t want him to know it.

“It’s a viable service that people would pay for and be happy to have,” she said. “Think about it.”

But he enjoyed it, didn’t really want to be paid. It was nice to be needed, to look after the neighborhood: to make sure things were okay. You didn’t stop being a cop when you stopped being a cop. And he wasn’t exactly retired, was he? He wouldn’t have left his post if he hadn’t felt that it was necessary, the right thing to do under the circumstances. But that was another matter.

The late-morning temperature was a perfect sixty-eight degrees. The light was golden, the air carrying the scent of the leaves he was raking, the aroma of burning wood from somewhere. In the driveway Ricky’s restored 1966 GTO preened, waiting for him to come home from school next weekend. Jones had it tuned up and detailed, so it would be cherry when the kid got back.

He missed his son. Their relationship through the boy’s late adolescence had been characterized, regrettably, by conflict more than anything else. Still, he couldn’t wait for Ricky to be back under his roof again, even if it was just for four days. If anyone told him how much he’d really, truly miss his kid, how he’d feel a squeeze on his heart every time he walked by that empty room, Jones wouldn’t have believed it. He would have thought it was just another one of those platitudes people mouthed about parenthood.

He leaned his rake against the trunk of the oak and removed his gloves. A pair of mourning doves cooed sadly at him. They sat on the railing of his porch, rustling their tawny feathers.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not for the first time. Earlier, he’d removed the beginning of their nest, a loose pile of sticks and paper that they managed somehow to place in the light cover of his garage door’s opening mechanism. Mourning doves made flimsy nests, were lazy enough to even settle in the abandoned nests of other birds. So the garage must have seemed like a perfect residence for them, offering protection from predators. But he didn’t want birds in the garage. They were harbingers of death. Everyone knew that. They’d been hanging around the yard, giving him attitude all morning.

“You can build your nest anywhere else,” he said, sweeping his arm over the property. “Just not there.”

They seemed to listen, both of them craning their necks as he spoke. Then they flapped off with an angry, singsong twitter.

“Stupid birds.”

He drew his arm across his forehead. In spite of the mild temperatures, he was sweating from the raking. It reminded him that he still needed to lose those twenty-five pounds his doctor had been nagging him about for years. His doctor, an annoyingly svelte, good-looking man right around Jones’s age, never failed to mention the extra weight, no matter the reason for his visit—flu, sprained wrist, whatever. You’re gonna die one of these days, too, Doc, Jones wanted to say. You’ll probably bite it during your workout. Whaddaya clocking these days—five miles every morning, more on the weekends? That’ll put you in an early grave. Instead Jones just kept reminding him that the extra weight around his middle had saved his life last year.

“I’m not sure that’s a compelling argument,” said Dr. Gauze. “What are the odds of your taking another bullet to the gut, especially now that you’re out to pasture?”

Out to pasture? He was only forty-seven. He was thinking about this idea of being out to pasture as a beige Toyota Camry pulled up in front of house and came to a stop. He watched for a second, couldn’t see the person in the driver’s seat. When the door opened and a slight woman stepped out, he recognized her without being able to place her. She was too thin, had the look of someone robbed of her appetite by anxiety. She moved with convalescent slowness up his drive, clutching a leather purse to her side. She didn’t seem to notice him standing there in the middle of his yard. In fact, she walked right past him.

“Can I help you?” he said finally. She turned to look at him, startled.

“Jones Cooper?” she said. She ran a nervous hand through her hair, a mottle of steel gray and black, cut in an unflatteringly blunt bob.

“That’s me.”

“Do you know me?” she asked.

He moved closer to her, came to stand in front of her on the paved drive that needed painting. She was familiar, yes. But no, he didn’t know her name.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Have we met?”

“I’m Eloise Montgomery.”

It took a moment. Then he felt the heat rise to his cheeks, a tension creep into his shoulders. Christ, he thought.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Montgomery?”

She looked nervously around, and Jones followed her eyes, to the falling leaves, the clear blue sky.

“Is there someplace we can talk?” Her drifting gaze landed on the house.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Darkness, My Old Friend is deeply plotted and complex and carries an undeniable momentum. Lisa Unger's enthralling cast of characters pulled me right in and locked me down tight. This is one book that will have you racing to the last page, only to have you wishing the ride wasn't over.”—Michael Connelly

"Lisa Unger is one of my favorite authors.  She gets better and better with each book."—Karin Slaughter, New York Times Bestselling author of Fallen

“A satisfying story with an eclectic and interesting cast of characters and believable dialogue. Unger shows her usual deftness at intricate plotting and explores the mother-child relationship from multiple angles…Sure to be another hit with Unger fans.”—Kirkus Reviews

"The beauty of this unconventional crime novel is that focus is not on whodunit but the darkness that drives us."—Family Circle

"Verdict...one of Unger's best thrillers yet."—Library Journal, starred review

“Good reading, canny characterizations.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Unger skillfully pulls together various stories in an exciting and logical way. Darkness, My Old Friend" moves at a brisk pace as Unger makes us desperately want to know what drives these various characters."—South Florida Sun Sentinel

Reading Group Guide

The questions, discussion topics, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Lisa Unger’s extraordinary novel, Darkness, My Old Friend, which Michael Connelly hailed as a “book that will have you racing to the last page, only to have you wishing the ride wasn’t over.”

1. Why is Jones drawn into the conversation with Eloise despite his initial impatience and skepticism? In what ways does Eloise’s demeanor and her explanation of her psychic experiences influence his—and the reader’s—response to her and her message?

2. What underlies Willow’s provocative behavior toward her teacher, Mr. Vance, and her boast that “here she was a freak and proud of it” [pp. 28]? Is her behavior understandable—perhaps even inevitable—for a teenager trying to adjust to an unfamiliar place?

3. How would you describe the relationship between Willow and her mother, Bethany? Are they more attuned to each other than most teenage daughters and their mothers? Do Bethany’s own vulnerabilities and doubts influence her treatment of Willow?

4. What does the session with his therapist reveal about how Jones defines himself [p. 54-61]?

5. Is his resistance to therapy typical of a man his age and circumstances? What impact do his conversations with Maggie have on his feelings about the value of therapy [p. 81-84; p.90-93]? Are there similarities between the skills of a therapist and those of a detective?

6. "On bad days—and there were many really, truly bad days—it was a curse.  On the good days, it was a gift” [p. 68]. What techniques or attitudes has Eloise developed to help her deal with the sudden intrusion of psychic events in her everyday life?  Is she right to share her visions even though their messages are difficult to interpret and act upon?

7. Compare Michael Holt’s behavior during meeting with Bethany [pp. 75-78] and his manner and thoughts as he tries to piece together the truth about what happened to his mother [pp. 94-108]. What do these scenes show about the way his mind works?  How does the author manage to simultaneously stimulate the reader’s curiosity, empathy, and suspicions? 

8. Unger introduces the coldly calculating Kevin Carr in the preface. A fuller picture of him and his marriage comes to light through his wife, Paula [pp. 157-170].  What does Unger achieve by using this device? In what ways do Paula’s questions and uncertainties about Kevin represent the larger concerns of the novel?

9. Darkness, My Old Friend offers two different perspectives on parenting: Dr. Maggie Cooper tells Bethany, “It’s always our instinct to feel like we’ve failed when our kids are suffering. But it’s not always our fault,” while Bethany believes that “parents were responsible for their kids, plain and simple” [p. 183]. How do these views apply to the following sets of parents and children: Willow and Bethany; Eloise and her daughter, Amanda; Michael and his mother and father; Cole and his mother, Robin; his father, Kevin; and his stepmother, Paula; and Jones, who harbors guilt and uneasiness about his “sick relationship with his mother” [p. 56]?

10. During therapy with Maggie, it emerges that  “For years Willow had been telling little lies to friends and her parents about meaningless things.... She liked the thrill of it, the making up of events...the reactions she got” [p. 256].  What are the ramifications, both positive and negative, of her tendency to make up stories? 

11. What was your reaction when you found out what happened to Marla Holt?  As she weaves together the separate threads of the novel, does Unger give hints to the solution?

12. We learn a lot about the characters through flashbacks and  “back stories” interspersed in the chapters devoted to their present-day situations and actions. What effect does this have on the pace of the novel and the development of the reader’s sympathies?

13. What do the descriptions of the natural landscape, the older parts of the town, and the new developments capture about suburban America? In what ways does the physical environment help establish the ambience of the community? 

14. Unger’s portrait of Eloise offers a fascinating and unusually intimate look at the inner world of a psychic. What do Eloise’s own words and musings (p. 24, pp. 193-198, p. 238, p. 302, for example) the comments and observations Ray Muldune, Jones, and others throughout the book, and the vivid psychic event toward the end (p. 299) convey about the challenges, as well as the satisfactions, her work provides? 

15. From the Greek mythological figure Cassandra, to Oda Mae Brown in the movie Ghost, psychics have long been featured in works of fiction, television, and film. According to newspaper accounts, they have also played a role in real-life crime solving. What accounts for the continuing interest in psychic experiences and powers?

16. Discuss the literal and metaphorical resonance of the novel’s title. Which of the characters embrace darkness as friend, and why?

17. Darkness, My Old Friend is set in the same town and has many of the same characters as the author’s bestselling Fragile. If you’ve read Fragile, in what ways does Darkness develop and extend the themes of that novel?  Do the behavior and relationships portrayed in Darkness change your impressions of and feelings about Jones, Maggie, and Eloise?  Would you like to read another novel set in The Hollows?  If so, which characters would you like to learn more about?

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews