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Twenty years ago, Detective Francis Loughlin sent Julian Vega, a seventeen-year-old boy, to prison for the murder of a pretty young nurse named Allison Wallis. Now, Julian is released from prison on a technicality, and another nurse, Christine Rogers, who seemed to be obsessed with the Julian Vega case, is found dead in her apartment.
Using the advances in DNA, Detective Loughlin is frustrated to find that even though Julian Vega’s DNA was found all over the Allison Wallis murder scene, it
wasn’t found at the Christine Rogers scene. Instead, Allison Wallis’s blood is found under the victim’s fingernails. But that can’t be right—because Allison has
been dead for twenty years.
Slipping into Darkness is deeper than just a mystery; Mr. Blauner writes deep characters with struggles and flaws. Detective Loughlin is going blind and is questioning his past methods and mistakes—and the author shows you that the good guys aren’t always good. Julian struggles with living on the outside after twenty years behind bars, and even as you’re thinking he may have brutally murdered two women, you can’t help feeling a bit sorry for him as he tries to pick up the pieces of his life and make the best of it. It will evoke your sense of righteousness. After all, Julian could have served a long sentence as an innocent man.
I have to say this is one of the best mysteries I’ve ever read. The story is so
bizarre that it kept me wondering, What’s going on here? You won’t be able to figure this one out unless you know a lot about DNA and how it works—and even then you probably won’t be able to solve the mystery. You’ll constantly be waffling back and forth between thinking that Julian committed the crimes and wondering if he didn’t. And you’ll have plenty of other suspects to wonder about, too, including Allison’s mother, Eileen, who keeps claiming Allison is still alive and that children have secrets—deep, dark secrets.
Slipping Into Darkness is a unique story—definitely not your usual, run-of-the-mill mystery—and I guarantee you’ll be challenged by the read.
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