Gloria

This extraordinarily accomplished first novel will put the name Mark Coovelis firmly on the literary map. Echoing the atmosphere and powerful noir style of James M. Cain, Gloria tells the absolutely riveting story of a man driven to penetrate the lies and secrets surrounding his beloved younger sister's death. And, in a spirit of modernism reminiscent of the work of Paul Auster, Mr.

Coovelis reminds us that, in investigating the wrongdoing of others, we're often lured back into the treachery of our own hearts.

Marvin Stone's sister had a history just in her names, from Sissy to Liz to Lisbeth. But Gloria - the incarnation she chose the day she left her home, husband and son behind - is the one that inhabits his thoughts.

It was beautiful Gloria who fled to Oakland calmly and coolly; who checked groceries to afford her stolen independence; who sought a tan to match the guise of her bleached-out hair; and who tried to resist the determined advances of Tunney, a smooth, carefree man with a penchant for wandering blondes.

The truth - about Gloria's death, and her killer's accusation that she herself had a hand in other murders - lies far from the steep, dry ditch in the Bay Area hills where she was found. But for Stone to venture into the harsh glare of the media that feeds on her sensational death would mean stumbling too recklessly out of his quiet, safe existence.

Cocooned in the nocturnal routine of his Berkeley restaurant, he has put distance between the present and the past with new friends, late nights, and a tough divorce. But dangerously, like the first fall rain on the oil-stained freeways, the trickle of memory gathers force and washes in.

And out of the bright California sun steps Lauren, a journalist, whose own personal desire to know about his sister lifts the shroud of his private grief and sends him on a journey whose course he never could have foreseen....

For Stone, Gloria's story swerves like the sun-baked roads that twist into dead ends around the nearby hillside mansions. Spurred by Lauren's inquisitiveness, Stone searches back through the landscapes of his youth - the Oregon forest dotted with cool, dark caves, the nights of muffled longing and a father who never seemed to sleep. Somewhere lay the source of the dull pain she carried in her chest, which cause her to seek solace with a killer.

Set amidst the shifting landscapes of the West Coast - where anyone's life can be reinvented with a car and a full tank of gas - Gloria tells the story of people struggling to connect and people irrevocably disconnected. With acutely rendered suspense, Coovelis brilliantly explores the devastating effect that memories can have on our everyday lives. Gloria is a haunting mystery, and a masterful debut.