The Black Hour
Lori Rader-Day
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper, 331 pp., $15.95
Ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook

The Black Hour is Lori Rader-Day’s debut novel. It takes place in the halls of academia, and it shows a good look at the maneuverings that occur in the ivory tower.

The story concerns Amelia Emmet, professor of sociology at a small and rather prestigious private university and victim of a shooting. A student named Leonard Lehane shot Amelia outside her office one evening then turned the gun on himself. Now a year later Amelia has physically recovered enough to return to work. Psychologically she still has some healing to do.

I found the backstory, and figuring out the real backstory is the heart of the mystery, to be quite engaging on a personal level. I work in academia, and for my sins, I was asked earlier this year to serve on a disciplinary committee. The thought of a student coming after me has crossed my mind more than once. It doesn’t help that my office is in a building in which three murders have occurred, one of them a beheading. (My wife is not aware of that, and we’ll just keep it that way, shall we?)

Amelia’s area of scholarship is the sociology of violence, an irony that isn’t lost on her. She’s aided by her new graduate student Nathaniel. Nathaniel’s research interest, aside from Capone era gangland killings in Chicago, is Amelia herself. He also finds himself getting sucked into the suicide prevention group on campus. Nathaniel, it seems, has some baggage of his own.  The title, by the way, comes from the suicide prevention group.

Amidst the looks, pity, and awkwardness she faces from her colleagues, is the pervasive question of why Leonard Lehane shot her. (Leonard and Lehane are both last names of critically acclaimed mystery writers. I wonder…) Amelia had had no contact with Leonard before the shooting, at least none she can think of. She certainly wasn’t having an affair with him, as some of the gossip.

Amelia and Nathaniel set out to find what motivated Leonard. And the closer they get, the more their lives are in danger.

This is a literary mystery, meaning that at times the prose and inner thoughts of the characters are as important as the mystery. I’m not a big fan of literary fiction, in part because it moves more slowly than straight genre fiction. This novel held my interest, even though there were times I wished the author would pick up the pace; in fairness those always seemed to be when I was reading before bed.

And as for the mystery, it’s well structured with multiple layers and some nice misdirection at times. The cast of supporting characters/suspects is well handled, and Ms. Rader-Day deftly keeps them from becoming interchangeable. One of the early reviews described The Black Hour as a Hitchcockian thriller, and that’s not far off the mark. Much of the suspense comes from what goes on in the characters’ heads.

This novel also appears to be unusual in that I don’t think it’s part of a series. Most authors and publishers want to have series because that’s a time proven way to build an audience and consequently build sales. I’m not sure how The Black Hour can be the inaugural volume in a series, considering the personal nature of the investigation is what drives Amelia and (in a different way) Nathaniel. I don’t see how the author can reproduce that without more significant trauma to her characters.  Maybe if Ms. Rader-Day killed the department chair…

Regardless of whether Ms. Rader-Day’s next book is a sequel or something totally different, I’ll be keeping my eye out for it.  The Black Hour hit shelves this past Tuesday.   I’d like to thank Meghan Quinn of Seventh Street Books for the review copy.