After Her; Joyce Maynard

Title: After Her 

Author: Joyce Maynard
Publication Year:  2013
Publisher: William Morrow
Edition: eGalley/personal copy
Source: Publisher / Edelweiss
Date Completed: July - 2013
Rating: 4/5

In part a coming of age story, but also based on the Trailside Killer...a.k.a Sunset Strangler case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, After Her tells the story of young sisters Rachel and Patty Torricelli. Patty is the youngest, in 5th grade when the story begins.

Both Rachel and Patty adore their dad, a homicide detective and also a big-time womanizer. Their relationship with their mother pretty much consists of living under the same roof.  After the parents split up, early on in the story, the mother becomes depressed and detached and the girls are pretty much left to care for and amuse themselves, except for the occasional times when they visit with their father and his girlfriend.

The girls like to play detective games, like what's up with the odd neighbor who lives on their street. They also enjoy entertaining themselves by making up stories, peering in windows to watch the televisions of their neighbors, since they no longer have cable television, and hanging out in the mountains nearby. However, when local women begin to turn up dead along the mountain trails, and there aren't any real suspects, Rachel and Patty are forbidden by their father to spend time in the mountains.

Instead of running scared, the sisters are even more curious about clues that might have been missed. When the murder count continues to go up,  their detective father, who is in charge of the investigations, seems at a loss and his career is on the line.  Rachel comes up with a plan to use what she claims be be her intuitive powers, which she thinks may help solve the cases, putting their lives at risk in the process.

......."Lying in my bed at night, I wanted to tell me father that I knew a few things about the killer too. (About his black loafers. His chubby fingers. And maybe a dog.) But I knew he would just have told me to stop thinking about it."

While the sisters at times seemed somewhat naive, at other times times seemed older than their years. Preoccupied with sex, in one instance Rachel conjures up images of the murderer having sex with the dead girls. The story is told from Rachel's POV and, I really loved reading about the close relationship between these sisters. Much of their daily activities seemed to ring true for what kids did for fun after school and in the summer at least in the 1960s and continuing into at least some of the 70s, before latch-key kids became popular and kids kept themselves amused indoors with television, video games and computers.

Overall, this novel had a lot going for it, which made non stop reading very easy. Part coming of age story, Family drama and even a real-life murder mystery. There were good doses of suspense,  I really loved how the author portrayed each sister. I felt like I knew girls rather well. I do wish that the murder aspect of the story could have been more fully developed. Although I liked this book, readers who need a clear cut resolution to all aspects of a story might be a little disappointed.