“… away from the light, you could see in the dark, you became a part of it, and it became a part of you.”
Oliver Curtin remembers some gentleness, some care from his mother, Margaret, Marg, occasionally Mom. Often her best friend Madge was there and together they were a family of sorts.
Oliver, Ollie, All, was raised in the worst of conditions. His mother was a junkie who worked in the sex trade. They constantly moved from one hovel to the next, from one ‘boyfriend’ to the next.
One night when Oliver was alone (he was often alone) one of those boyfriends, who knew he would be, came to visit.
Oliver thinks he was three or four, or four or five, when he was given his first pill. He remembers the warmth and the slipping into the comfort of nothingness. As he grew older the pills continued, his disconnection from life building until it was part of his psyche.
Seldom in school, he remembers things by events: the heat of the summer, kids returning to college, the Thanksgiving and Christmas that never quite took place in his household. Then the inevitable cold bite of winter. Year after year after year.
Soon he was wandering the neighbourhood, the college campus with it’s bright lights, leading to house after tidy house. He imagines the families within, the food, the dinner table, the love and laughter. The questions about their day. All the things he realizes he never had, would never have.
He was in his teens when, in the deepest of night, he looked for homes to break into. Always places where families were away on vacations and holidays, he never wanted to frighten people. Inside he’d wander the house, imagine their lives, sometimes sleep in their beds. He was never destructive. One night though, things took a bad turn.
Walk the Dark is rendered in dual recounting from the prison where he is serving thirty-years-to-life and from the past of his childhood. This a story told in achingly substantive detail that is profoundly moving.
It took me a while to start this review. The book was still swirling around my brain the day before my usual post date and I wasn’t ready to put fingers to the keyboard. I hope I’ve managed to give this book and it’s author Paul Cody the consideration it deserves. Highly recommended.
~June Lorraine Roberts
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Murder in Common is #33 on the Feedspot Top 100 Crime Novel Website
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