Thursday, October 3, 2013

Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes

Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes

Annabel is a bit of a loner.  She lives alone, keeps to herself at work as a police analyst and spends her free time bringing groceries to her mother and playing servant to her cat.  When her cat disappears into the yard next door, Annabel follows the cat up the neighbor’s back steps.  Kitty ran into the house through a broken pane in the door and an unmistakable order is escaping through that opening.  Not wanting to call the police unnecessarily (working as a civilian at the police office she knows how busy weekends can be) she enters the house and finds the decomposing body of a neighbor she thought moved away months before.

Unsettled by her gruesome weekend find Annabel searches the police files to see how many other decomposing bodies have been found in the area.  There have been more than twenty in the current year, and it is until early fall.  The most found in any other given year are around ten.  What’s going on?  Why are these people stopping to care for themselves and starving to death in homes stocked with food?  Could something sinister be happening?

This is the third book of Haynes available in the United States.  I really enjoyed her first (In the Darkest Corner), thought her second was okay (Dark Tide) and thought this one was wonderfully creepy.  I am awaiting her fourth!