Solvinic's debut novel touches upon crime in a small Ohio county
“The first time I killed a man was on Tuesday,” begins Columbus author Nicola Solvinic's debut novel, and it doesn't slow down from there.
The killer in question, and the narrator of the novel, is Anna Koray, And the kill in question is a justified one.
Koray is a detective in the sheriff's department of a rural Ohio county, called to a scene of domestic violence, where she is accidentally exposed to PCP and peppered with birdshot by a man who has left a woman dead inside the house. She returns fire in self-defense.
The problem is, Anna gets a secret thrill out of observing this man die, “watching it like a voyeur, connected and disconnected to this vanishing of a man I didn't know.”
Given her past, she may have reason to worry. Anna is the daughter of a father she idolized until, when she was 12, it was revealed that he was the Forest Strangler, a man who killed at least 27 women and then arranged their bodies in picturesque tableaux with river rocks and local flowers as a tribute to the Forest God he worshipped.
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Anna was treated by a psychiatrist, who hypnotized her to remove her memories, and she then was adopted by a family who didn't know her past.
Her memories remained hidden for years, but now, scraps of them are emerging into her mind. And now, though her father was executed decades earlier, the Forest Strangler appears to be at work again, with new victims found in the area where Anna lives.
After the killing and the drug exposure, she is losing track of stretches of time, finding herself covered with dirt and with miles on her car's odometer she can't account for.
Anna, though she is supposed to be on leave to recover from being shot, tags along with the officer who is responsible for the new cases, and then, compelled to solve them, approaches her old psychiatrist to see if she can reverse the hypnosis and let her access her memories again.
Anna is a compelling character, equal parts strong and fragile, and Solvinic surrounds her with an equally captivating cast of characters − her emergency-room doctor boyfriend, who has some secrets of his own; a jaunty colleague willing to break some rules; a true-crime podcaster who is definitely crossing some journalistic lines; and more.
As Anna finds herself haunted by her father’s Forest God, the woods, streams and rocky spaces of Ohio become central to the story, full of both magic and menace.
Both thoughtful and suspenseful, the novel is to surely lure readers into an enticingly dark world.
At a glance
Solvinic is to be in a conversation with crime writer Jonathan Fredrick, followed by a book signing, at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., Bexley, at 7 p.m. May 21.
Tickets are $5, or $30 to include a copy of the book. Visit gramercybooksbexley.com for more information.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Suspenseful, haunting debut novel lures readers into a dark world
