THE RUINS

Veteran journalist Wick’s first novel uses a horrific murder in a quiet Long Island village to rip the lid off a series of outrages, fictional and not, in the past.

Most of the locals in Lindenhurst have their eye on the 1954 World Series in the Polo Grounds when new police Chief Paul Beirne—a World War II vet whose panic attacks are rooted in his abandonment by his mother, his hatred of his pro-Nazi father, and intensified by his captivity in a prisoner-of-war camp—gets a call about a woman found dead in a field. The wounds inflicted on Constance McKay eerily echo those found on Carol Berkowitz, who was dumped in nearby Argyle Lake back in 1938. When the husband who reported Constance missing is found murdered in his burning house the next day, Paul knows he’s onto something big and nasty. And when his attempts to question carpenter Rudolf Haase, the obvious suspect, are upended by village mayor Olly Madden, state trooper Schmidt, and Lindenhurst Star editor Jimmy McGregor, who’s taken up with Paul’s ex-wife, he realizes that the stakes are high. So, it’s no great surprise when Paul is placed on leave, then fired from his job just as the pot is coming to a boil. The fact that Carol Berkowitz was a kitchen helper fired by heroic aviator Charles Lindbergh just before his baby was kidnapped in 1932 links the latest murder to eugenics, espionage, and an iconic American crime. Even readers who have trouble following all those links or lose track of everyone present and past who end up implicated will appreciate Wick’s explosive plotting and extensive historical research.

A shattering journey from Lindenhurst to Lindbergh.