Hold Back the Dark-Eileen Carr

Hold Back the Dark
Eileen Carr
Pocket, Mar 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 1416587942

Clinical psychologist Aimee Gannon is awakened at two in the morning by Sacramento Police Detective Josh Wolf. He informs her he has one of her patients in custody at a hospital’s emergency room; the woman is uncommunicative. He asks her to meet him there to see if she can seventeen year old Taylor Dawkin out of her catatonic state. He fails to tell Aimee that Taylor was found covered in blood sitting between her dead parents in a scene so gruesome that hardened cops wanted to puke.

Tests later prove that Taylor, a cutter, slashed open her hands and used her blood to draw unexplainable patterns at the murder scene that Aimee believes have critical meaning to the horror that happened to the Dawkin family. Aimee realizes immediately that the totally mentally withdrawn Taylor needs institutionalization. Meanwhile Aimee’s former patient Kyle, who insists he loves her, was convicted of attempted rape, but is on parole and back to stalking her. As Taylor continues to draw geometric shapes, Aimee wonders if the drawings relate to abuse during a childhood period that the teen had no memories of when they talked before the murders. As the psychologist puts together the puzzle pieces, she risks her life to insure an innocent child is not the next victim.

HOLD BACK THE DAWN is a memorable romantic suspense tale that will keep readers interested in the story line from start to finish as there are four primes suspects which include Taylor that keeps the audience wondering who the killer is. The attempted rape has turned the heroine into damaged goods, which is an overdone angst requirement of the sub-genre. Still the violence she suffered forced Aimee to keep her personal life on hold until she meets Josh who cherishes her from the first time they meet and makes her want an intimate relationship with him. Fans will immensely relish this tense investigative tale as the shrink and the cop search for clues while falling in love.

Harriet Klausner