Author Blanchard keeps tension high in ‘Trace of Evil’

17 stories inspired by great American paintings

By Oline H. Cogdill

race of Evil’ by Alice Blanchard (Minotaur) Witchcraft — both historical and current — becomes a gripping metaphor for how violence can continue to permeate a community for decades in this intricately plotted launch of a new series. In her sixth novel, Alice Blanchard masterfully weaves in history and contemporary issues as she explores how the tragedy of a community and a family are intertwined.

The rural community of Burning Lake in upstate New York thrives on its tourist trade, as visitors come to see where centuries ago several young women accused of being witches were publicly executed. Many of the town’s residents are uneasy that acts of violence have provided a steady income.

Rookie Detective Natalie Lockhart knows all too well about a family tragedy — about 20 years ago her older sister, Willow, was murdered by a local teenager who is still in prison. Willow’s murder is never far from Natalie’s mind, nor that of her surviving sister Grace, the single mother of 15-year-old Ellie.

But the lore of violence also appeals to a group of high school girls who form a “coven,” complete with seances in the woods, death spells and poppet dolls buried in backyards to explore the dark side of Wicca. Of course, these curses aren’t real, more of a game for these girls; the coven is a way for them to feel as if they belong. Natalie understand their motives — in high school she also dabbled with studying witchcraft until it scared her, but she now worries that her niece may be drawn to the dark side.

This cover image released by Minotaur shows ‘Trace of Evil,’ a novel by Alice Blanchard. (AP)

The murder of popular schoolteacher Daisy Buckner has Natalie wondering if the someone took the witchcraft game too far. But the investigation is stymied because the main suspect, the teenage son of a local drug kingpin, is in a coma. The case is personal to Natalie — she knew Daisy quite well as being the wife of a

This cover image released by Pegasus Books shows ‘From Sea to Stormy Sea: 17 Stories Inspired by Great American Paintings,’ edited by Lawrence Block. (AP)

fellow cop and Grace’s closest friend. As she and the small Burning Lake police force investigate Daisy’s murder, Natalie also continues to look into the disappearance of nine transients who vanished throughout the years.

Blanchard keeps the tension high in “Trace of Evil,” balancing the plot between the police investigation and Natalie’s own family drama. Blanchard’s view of a small town excels. Here, people may think they know every detail of their neighbors’ lives, but secrets still can be kept.

The well-sculpted Natalie quickly proves herself to be an intelligent and a shrewd investigator guided by compassion for her community and love of her family. Her relationship with her fellow officers, especially a growing affection for one of her colleagues, elevates “Trace of Evil.”

Readers will welcome a return to Burning Lake with Natalie at the helm.

“From Sea to Stormy Sea: 17 Stories Inspired by Great American Paintings,” Pegasus Books, edited by Lawrence Block

Writers take their inspiration from a variety of sources: an unforgettable face, overheard conversation or perhaps, a painting.

The well-known crime writer Lawrence Block has parlayed that last scenario into two volumes of short stories, the first inspired by works of Edward Hopper and the second, favorite paintings of his authors.

Now he has come out with a third, “From Sea to Stormy Sea,” an anthology of 17 stories that riff exclusively on American paintings, from Robert Henri’s portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to Andy Warhol’s mural for the 1964 World’s Fair, “Thirteen Most Wanted Men,” and Mark Rothko’s shimmering “Number 14.”

Since the writers he’s chosen tend to specialize in crime and genre fiction, the stories are chock-full of loners, losers and cynics who get to say snappy lines like, “Sex. Religion. Dining out. Sooner or later, some human being is going to make you regret participating in any or all of the above.” (Spoken by the enterprising heroine of Jan Burke’s “Superficial Injuries.”)

One of the very best is “Baptism in Kansas” by detective writer Sara Paretsky, who uses the 1928 John Steuart Curry painting of the same name to conjure up a vivid portrait of the hardscrabble lives of white farmers in Kansas in the early 1900s, their religious revivals, as depicted in the artwork, and racist campaigns to get rid of the Native American population.

Other standouts include “The Man From Hard Rock Mountain,” a post-apocalyptic fantasy by Jerome Charyn based on the eerie Rockwell Kent engraving, “Twilight of Man,” and the deliciously noir “On Little Terry Road” by Tom Franklin and “Get Him” by Micah Nathan, inspired by paintings of the lesser known artists John Hull and Daniel Morper.

Not all the stories work, but enough do to make it worth it. Admirers of Winslow Homer’s stormy seascapes will likely enjoy “Adrift off the Diamond Shoals,” by Brendan DuBois, which pivots on a writer seeking revenge on a sleazy real estate developer who wants to knock down his family’s modest house on North Carolina’s Outer Banks to put up a “capitalist castle.”

Then there’s the nasty little confection “Garnets” by the crime writer Christa Faust, who has moonlighted as a professional dominatrix. It’s a chilling tale of a chance meeting between two women who give new meaning to the term “femme fatale.” Her inspiration is Helen Frankenthaler’s “Adirondacks,” whose swirls of red paint could make you think of a brilliant sunset — or a bloody corpse. (AP)

This photo provided by Billy Newman Photography shows an owl nestled in a Christmas

tree that belongs to Katie McBride Newman in Newnan, Ga. (AP)