Carnal Innocence

If there was one Nora Roberts I recommend you read it would have to be this one. Carnal Innocence was probably one of the best truly creepy thrillers I’ve read. It was no surprise, really, that I had to return to it.

The small Southern town of Innocence in America is not so innocent anymore. Young women have started going missing without a trace. Until there naked bodies turn up all over the place. Murdered. In the middle, as it were, of carnal pleasure, as is obvious very quickly.

Caroline Waverley is a talented violinist of international repute. And after endless performances on the international circuit and an emotional breakdown and an equally messy breakdown in the middle of one, she’s just searching for a moment of peace and quiet at her Granny’s empty house; a chance to feel the comfort of home. But her first night in Innocence she’s convinced she heard something or someone moving through the dead leaves in her backyard. And the next morning they find a dead body behind her house.

­­­Tucker Longstreet has lived in his family’s plantation house in Innocence all his life. He knows every face in the town, particularly those of the young women around. However, he’s fascinated by this new face that’s moved in next door. And after all that unpleasantness of murder it’s his neighbourly duty to offer the poor thing some comfort. Except ­­­Tucker had grown up playing and swimming in that little creek behind his house. And he’d recently helped the Sheriff drag the naked body of a girl out of there; the body of a girl he’d known and very recently been involved with. And the creek would never be the same again. And he knew he was a suspect in the murder, even if the Sheriff didn’t say so. But he has no idea how much closer home the murder has really come.

What happens when a small town is caught in the throes of murder of a particularly ugly kind. Because the trouble with small towns is that everybody knows and is in everybody’s business.

I’d give this one an easy 5. A must read!