Rest Now, Beloved
Blake S. Lee, 2015
CreateSpace
334 pp.
ISBN-13: 1508754039
Summary
In Rest Now, Beloved, a fictional account of an actual police case, seven-year-old Christopher Abkhazian refuses to be forgotten.
This child's death took place during the waning days of Prohibition in San Diego. Some said it was accidental death; pathologists disagreed.
Unsolved, it gathered dust on cold case shelves for over sixty years. When a team of forensic detectives reopens the investigation in 1990, it expects to put the case to closure. But this victim demands closure, not obscurity.
An unlikely duo begins an investigation of their own. Ex-policeman Pete McGraw believes this case has been purposely mishandled; there is a cover-up. McGraw knows the facts; he was the chief detective in 1933.
Reporter Sera Schilling begins delving. As the truth unfolds, she steps on a land mine when she uncovers a dark and deadly family secret—a secret they would kill to keep buried.
Author Bio
• Birth—April 5, 1944
• Where—Rochester, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., San Diego State University
• Currently—San Diego, California
Writing under the pseudonym of Blake S. Lee, the author is a long-time resident of San Diego. She is married, the mother of three grown daughters, and the grandmother of four grandchildren who delightfully fill her time. Having taught high school literature, she has a profound respect for the written word and admiration of other brilliant minds who have expressed it. This is her debut novel.
Ms. Lee has been asked how the idea for this novel came to her. In 1990, as a graduate student in an archival records research class, she was assigned a name of a victim. She had no further information, other than the victim's death became a cold case. It was her responsibility to "solve" the case using documents, interviews, records, etc.
The path that the protagonist, Sera Schilling, a newspaper reporter, takes in seeking the truth behind a child's brutal death so long ago mirrors Lee's paper trail, the mode of investigation in 1990, pre-computer age. The obsession for closure that propels protagonist, Pete McGraw in his obsession for closure, is felt in Lee's compelling sensitivity to the lives and times of those involved in the boy's death.
The catalyst that fired inspiration to write a fictional account of this story was when this case was reopened by a forensic team of detectives in 2005. Using no new information, witnesses, or evidence, the team closed the case and purged the records. Feeling that this re-investigation appeared shamefully scanty, Lee wrote this parallel story in order to give the victim voice. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
A fast-paced and haunting mystery novel (that) almost seamlessly weaves together the new and old, bringing sentimentality, family, love, and violent injustice together in a way that feels both touching and painfully true.
CreateSpace
An intrepid junior reporter takes on a decades-old cold case.... Lee's engrossing prose is rooted in specific detail that wonderfully evokes the setting of San Diego, both contemporary and historical. A complex, well-plotted tale with an engaging setting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Although the book, Rest Now, Beloved is specific to a place and time, what human issues are presented to readers that are universal and common?
2. How does the relationship between Pete McGraw and Sera Schilling evolve in the book?
3. Pete McGraw's police journal is the key to solving the mystery. Why does Lee wait until near the end of the story to present it?
4. If you were to choose a single adjective to describe your feelings at the end of the book, Rest Now, Beloved, what word would you choose and why?
5. What drives Sera Schilling?
6. What drives Pete McGraw?
7. What are your impressions of the fictional character, Paco? Was his character developed enough to create suspense? Why did author Lee keep his character in the background?
8. In what ways does Rest Now, Beloved differ from typical mysteries or cold case novels?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)