REVIEW: The Quiet Streets of Winslow

The Quiet Streets of Winslow, by Judy Troy

The Quiet Streets of Winslow is a starkly beautiful work of literary fiction masquerading as a murder mystery. The calm, lyric tone of Judy Troy’s prose takes her reader away to the sparse, open spaces of northern Arizona and into the hearts of her characters.

The mystery begins with the discovery of the body of a young woman in a lonely culvert. She has been murdered and her body placed in the desert. The police see it as a crime of passion, and look to her past to discover her killer. The story alternates between three narrators; the teenage boy who discovers the body, his older half-brother who becomes a suspect, and the middle-aged detective assigned to investigate the case. The plot snakes forward with all the twists and dead-ends of a satisfying who-done-it, but it is the characters’ inner lives that are the true focus of the novel. The sudden possibilities of a first love, the pain of an unrequited love, and the emptiness of a lost love blend together for a wonderfully satisfying read.

 — Scott Hamiel, Main Library, Charleston, S.C.

MARCH WINNER: Hats off to reference librarian Michael Nelson of Mount Pleasant Regional Library. He won a pair of tickets to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens from Charleston Currents in a monthly drawing for reviewers.

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