The Night Bus - Hardcover

We first meet Cath Tolland as an anonymous passenger on the night bus to Florida, traveling in a deep personal fog that eventually lands her in a hospital emergency room. Once she's identified there, her sister-in-law Yvonne arrives from Connecticut to restore her to her husband Derek, the musician-minister she had stabbed before amnesia and flight took over. As her recovery commences at home, Cath gradually becomes aware of many things: the old house with the garden she loves, left to her by her Aunt Elizabeth; the sacred music she used to sing with Derek's church choir; her near certainty of her husband's infidelity; the tragic deaths of two young women connected to him. She visits her lawyer Luc Beausoleil to find that Aunt Elizabeth's legacy has multiplied, making her rich. Through Luc, she hires a detective agency to look further into the deaths that so disquiet her. In time, however, relations with Derek improve to the point of their spending a few days together at Derek's cabin in the woods. It's here, in this bucolic but isolated setting, that Cath faces a struggle for her life, and here that all her questions are finally answered. Law (Cross-Check, 1997, etc.) powerfully evokes Cath's uneasiness and rising tension, all in a narrative style sometimes verging on the poetic but always suspenseful. A superior performance, inarguably the author's best to date. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Cath Tolland wakes up in a hospital in Florida and has no memory of what led her there. Standing over her is a woman of whom she is vaguely fearful, and memories slowly come back to her. She returns with the woman, Yvonne, who is her sister-in-law, to Connecticut, Derek (her husband), and an isolated life of starting over. Yet her memories return as feelings, and there is an air of uneasiness about the entire household. As Cath regains her strength and memory, terrifying questions emerge: Why does she fear her husband? Why does Yvonne live with the two of them? The answers to these and other questions are disappointingly obvious. The story unfolds as expected, the suspense is momentary, yet Cath's rediscovery of herself and her inner monologues keep the story afloat. Ellie Barta-Moran
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