The Innocents

"As the police chief in a small town, World War II veteran Karl Myers is the prototypical hard-edged cop. His marriage has dissolved; he lives in the brief space between calls--too many that entail the antics of juvenile delinquents, rather than real crime--and reaches for the bourbon bottle more often than is good for him. Not much serious crime goes down in this cookie-cutter rural suburbia, so the brutal murder of a young boy rocks the community. While husbands and wives struggle for perfect outward appearances, inside, two families in this small town are just about to shatter when a brutal murder pulls back the curtains on abuse, battery, and the trauma of a nation ... "The Innocents" explores the dark side of the family life of "The Greatest Generation." This is a murder mystery that is less about "who done it" than about exploring the trauma of a world still reeling from the fallout of World War II. Author Jeff Lee writes with an excellent sense for tension and humanity with such attention to detail that readers can feel the choking claustrophobic lives led by the wives of war-traumatized veterans. There's a distinct sense of time in the book, which works much to its overall advantage. 1955 comes to life in this novel in a profound way." San Francisco Book Review "The Innocents" is an eloquent example of Historical Noir, the genre that James Ellroy characterizes as the "nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams ... The wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalignment" ... and the genre that "canonizes the inherent human urge toward self-destruction."