LEGACY OF MASKS by Sallie Bissell
Only Sallie Bissell could write a story about a pedophile and make it bearable to read. Only Sallie Bissell could write a story that incorporates Indian Legends and the supernatural and make it credible. Only Sallie Bissell could combine a murder mystery with a continuing love story and make it completely balanced. And only Sallie Bissell could take a character and set of circumstances that she began in the novel IN THE FOREST OF HARM and continued in A DARKER
JUSTICE and CALL THE DEVIL BY HIS OLDEST NAME and repeats in her latest novel LEGACY OF MASKS,;and keep it fresh. To paraphrase a popular song of a few years back, "Write, Sallie, write!"
Bissell's heroine is Mary Crow, an attorney who has gone through a lot of drama and trauma in the last three books by Bissell. At the start of this novel she is headed back home to Pisgah County, North Carolina to work in the District Attorney's office. She is also headed home to re-ignite her romance with Johnny Walkingstick, her own true love from childhood till now. Theirs has been a rocky relationship but Mary is determined that this time it will work.
Unknown to Mary she is walking into a hornet's nest when she arrives in Hartsville, North Carolina. There is a pedophile at large there and he is preying on one young girl after another. He is a powerful man and he intimidates his prey by threatening to fire their fathers from their jobs with his company. This keeps the girls silent.
Mary gets involved with a young man accused of murdering a teen-age girl. She knows, or believes strongly, that he is innocent, and wants to do all she can to help him. This causes conflicts in her professional life as well as in her personal one. Johnny wants Mary to stay out of dangerous situations and this could certainly be troubling case and one that could place her in risky situations.
Bissell knows how to let the suspense build and the intensity of the situations smolder. She also is a master at giving full descriptions of her characters so that the reader feels a full knowledge of who they are and what they might do. That is particularly true of Deke Keener, the pedophile. The reader sees the working of his mind as well as the image he projects.
Pedophilia could be a subject that would turn most readers off, but Sallie Bissell makes her story believable without giving an abundance of details about Keener's actions. She gets her point across without being graphic, and this is how she keeps the readers interest and tolerance level satisfied.
Mary Crow and Johnny Walkingstick are quite a couple, and interesting events surround them. As you read one Sallie Bissell novel you are already anticipating the next one. It can't come soon enough. And I repeat, "Write, Sallie, write!"
LEGACY OF MASKS is published by Bantam Books. It contains 339 pages and sells for $23.00.