A MOTHER'S WORST NIGHTMARE - TAMI HOAG'S "DOWN THE DARKEST ROAD"

“Down the Deepest Road” is another one of Tami Hoag’s eerily suspenseful novels.  It is set in 1986, in the days before DNA testing.  Lauren Lawton was once a happy wife and mother, living in a quiet town near Santa Barbara, California.  But four years earlier Lauren’s sixteen year old daughter, Leslie, never returned home from a high school softball game.

The police suspected Roland Ballencoa, a photographer and convicted sex offender.  Lauren is convinced that Ballencoa kidnapped her daughter, but the police could not find evidence that the photographer committed the crime.  Two years after Leslie’s disappearance, Leslie’s husband died when his car fell off the edge of a mountain.  The official report found that Lauren’s husband had been drinking and declared the death an accident.  Lauren, however, believes that her husband had had enough of the conjecture and allegations concerning his role in Leslie’s disappearance and that his death was intentional.

So Lauren is left alone with her younger daughter, Leah.  In 1986 Leah is almost the age Leslie was when she disappeared.  Trying to move on with their lives, Lauren and Leah move to the small California town, Oak Knoll.  Oak Knoll in the 1980s is the setting for two other Tami Hoag mysteries – “Deeper than the Dead” and “Secrets to the Grave”.  Both are wonderfully suspenseful thrillers, but it is not necessary to have read them in order to understand Hoag’s latest novel.  “Down the Darkest Road” stands on its own.

While shopping in her new town, Lauren is convinced she sees Roland Ballencoa.  Soon Leah seems to be a target of the photographer and Lauren is afraid she will lose the only child she has left.  With the help of Oak Knoll homicide detective, Tony Mendez, Lauren is able to both protect Leah and discover what really happened to Leslie four years earlier.

As always, Tami Hoag writes a page-turner likely to keep readers awake at night.  Hoag excels at showing ordinary people caught up in nightmarish situations not of their own making.  Leslie and Leah Lawton could be anyone’s daughters.  Roland Ballencoas live in American towns both large and small.  Hoag’s many plot twists and turns are up to her usual high standard.  “Down the Deepest Road” is a novel all fans of crime fiction should read.