By Lisa Unger
Crown, $24.00, 360 pages

Jones Cooper, retired detective, is at loose ends. Since his early retirement from the police force, he putters around and actively works on not dealing with traumatic events from his past. Things start looking up when he is asked to investigate the disappearance of a local kid’s mother. As Jones starts looking into the case, another case from his past also comes back to the forefront – the unsolved disappearance of a woman from town. As Jones digs further, he finds answers to old questions and may just find the key for putting his own life back together.

Darkness, my old friend is the second book in the Jones Cooper series by author Lisa Unger. There are some compelling aspects of the book – the most interesting being the side story of Willow, a troubled teenager, and Jones’s own attempt at putting together a new life for himself. The rest of the story, though, drags and is filled with fantastic yet implausible scenarios such as memory repression and drawn out conversations between a psychic and a dead person. Fans of the author may still enjoy this novel but in general it was forgettable.

Reviewed by Barbara Cothern

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