Book Review: Healey's Cave by Aaron Paul Lazar

TITLE: Healey’s Cave: a Sam Moore Mystery
AUTHOR: Aaron Paul Lazar
PUBLISHER: Twilight Times Books
DATE OF PUBLICATION: August 15th, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60619-162-0
PAGES: 267
GENRE: Paranormal Mystery

With the introduction of his newest series, Sam Moore Mysteries, Aaron Lazar has given his many fans another cause for rejoicing. I’ve just finished reading Healey’s Cave which so engrossed me on a busy traveling holiday that it commanded every free second.

Sam Moore, the protagonist, is a just-retired small town family doctor, loving husband, devoted grandfather, avid gardener, and enthusiastic chef. On his first morning of retirement Moore sets out before breakfast determined to eradicate the 12-foot high invasive Japanese Knot wood “jungle” threatening to overtake his gardens and unearths a cloudy green marble known as a cat’s-eye. The marble reminds him of those his younger brother Billy and he played with as children. Fifty years earlier, Billy mysteriously disappeared on his 11^th birthday. The marble exerts a strange pull on Moore’s psyche, alarming him with strange experiences as he starts to plum the questions surrounding his brother’s disappearance Might the marble have been Billy’s, he wonders. Was Billy really dead? Was he a victim of a serial killer that had been murdering 11-year-old boys every five years? Was Moore’s own grandson the next victim? Or was Billy still alive and trying to reach him?

Lazar has aptly named this mystery Healey’s Cave, for its pages hold many a surprise tunnel and twisted turn. The warm portrayal of Moore’s love for his family, the insights into the MS that crippled his wife and the details of his work in gardens rife with blooms and in kitchens redolent with scent bring to this mystery a dimension of humanity I found very appealing. Lazar has woven an intriguing tapestry of secrets that kept me guessing until the end. I look forward to the next in the series and more of Lazar’s writing.

 

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2010

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006. She is a columnist for the Cook County News Herald and has been published in anthologies and periodicals nationwide.