Created by Rene Denfeld
Although retired cop and widower LARRY PALMER isn’t a private eye per se, and he isn’t even the main character, he makes for a dandy potential series character in Rene Denfeld‘s 2024 novel Sleeping Giants.
Still mourning the death of his wife Marjorie and looking for something/anything to keep himself keeping on, Larry is just spinning his wheels in his cabin in Eagle Cove, a small town on the rugged Oregon coast that was “far away from everything.” It was Marjorie’s idea of the ideal place to retire, but it’s a place Larry had never really wanted to be.
And then Amanda Dufresne, a neurodiverse young zookeeper from Portland, pops up. Adopted at birth, in the course of tracing her birth parents, she discovers that she had an older brother she never knew, Dennis, who, at the ripe old age of four, was placed in Brightwood, a residential treatment center in Eagle Cove for boys with behavioral issues. Five years later, he was dead, allegedly swept out to sea and drowned by violent waves on the Northwest coast.
With nothing better to do, Larry agrees to help Amanda find out more about the incident, now almost twenty years in the past, but the more they hunt for answers, the more questions bubble to the surface. Questions about the drowning, about Brightwood’s troubled history of abuse and neglect, and about a possible coverup that local authorities deny.
It’s an engaging tale, heart-wrenching at times, and the subplot about Molly, the polar bear Amanda is in charge of back at the zoo, is seemingly superflous, but the growing friendship between Larry and Amanda, over forty years his junior, makes up for it.
I have no idea if this is a standalone or not, but I’d love to see Larry (and Amanda?) again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A licensed private investigator herself, Rene Denfeld served as the Chief Investigator at a public defender’s office working hundreds of cases. She was awarded the Break The Silence Award in Washington, DC in 2017 for her social justice work, and was also named a hero of the year by the New York Times. She’s also an award-winning author of several fiction and nonfiction books, including there Naomi Cottie series, about a private investigator specializing in missing children. Her dark fantasy novel, The Enchanted (2014), received the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger in France, and her work on cognitively impaired parents for the New York Times Magazine is considered seminal in the field. She has written for many esteemed publications, including the New York Times Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Oregonian.
UNDER OATH
- “Though the subject matter is often wrenching, Denfeld wrings considerable sweetness from the relationship between Amanda and Larry, and never allows the narrative to wallow in Dickensian misery. The result is a heartfelt mystery that will keep readers turning pages late into the night.”
— Publishers Weekly on Sleeping Giants
NOVELS
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
