The Last Whisper in the Dark by Tom Piccirilli (hardcover, $26) (release date-7/9/13)

"The Last Whisper in the Dark" is the extraordinary follow-up to the extraordinary "The Last Kind Words," one of MBTB's best books of 2012.

This is a modern-day version of Dante's "Inferno." Terry Rand, the narrator of both stories, must make his way through the harrowing levels of the hell that his life has become. Are there any safe havens for him? Not likely, not in this lifetime, but that doesn't stop Terry from trying to find one.

In "The Last Kind Words," we were introduced to the Rand family: grandfather Shepherd and his sons, Pinscher, Malamute, and Greyhound. Mal and Grey don't have legitimate children, so Pinscher has carried on the family ritual (or curse) of naming offspring after dogs. His children are Collier, Terrier (or Terry), and Airedale. Another family tradition is thieving. Whether it's second story work, grifting, cheating, or lying, confidence, trust, valuables, and money are stolen artfully and professionally.

If you haven't read the first book, stop reading right here because there are major spoilers to the first book coming right along.

SPOILER ALERT!

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For those of you who have read the first book, here is a reminder of what happened to bring us to the beginning of the current book. Collier was on death row for a killing spree. He insisted, however, that one of the murders attributed to him was not his. He sought the help of his estranged brother, Terry, to help uncover the real killer. Terry had moved out of state and was working on a ranch, trying to forget his warped little family. His sister, Dale, calls him for help with the turmoil surrounding Collier's impending execution. Terry, in fact, finds the true killer of the extra victim. In the process, Terry's uncles Mal and Grey are killed.

As we begin "Last Whisper," Pinscher is a retired thief, still collecting Toby mugs, and stealthily disappearing at night. Sixteen-year-old Dale acts in school plays and dreams of being an actress. Grandpa Shep is still shrouded in the mists of Alzheimer's. Terry still longs for his teenage love, Kimmy, who has married his former best friend, Chubb. They have a daughter that Terry nicknames "Scooter" in his daydreams.

"Last Whisper" mostly belongs to Ellie, Terry's mother. After thirty years of silence and exile by her family because she married Pinscher, Ellie's brother, Will, has called because their father, Perry, is dying. Will, Perry, and Will's son, John, are all in the movie business and for most of that time have lived just twenty minutes away from Ellie in New York.

"I didn't even know her maiden name," Terry thinks. It is Crowe. And the collective noun, murder of crows, seems somehow to apply, because who and what they are trigger murder or thoughts of murder.

Terry also has been summoned to Perry's deathbed. Perry wants him to kill someone. Why do people assume I am a killer, he thinks throughout the book. "You look like you want to kill everybody all the time," another character finally answers.

Although Terry goes out of his way not to kill anyone, even going so far as to craft convoluted alternative solutions, violence and death dog his steps.

In addition to dodging around his newly found family members, his ex-friend Chubb has gotten himself mixed up in a bank robbery scheme gone haywire. Chubb is in hiding, and a real killer -- a beautiful, charming, enigmatic, philosophical man named Walton Endicott -- has been hired to kill Chubb and the robbers. Endicott's weapon -- a needle. (Acupuncture, knitting, sewing? Terry muses.) The ultimate conflict arises. Does Terry really want to save Chubb, because if Chubb dies, he could claim the affections of Kimmy and Scooter.

"Last Whisper" has the feel of a tale set within the mythology of our collective unconscious. There are a moral conflict, a hero, devil incarnates, obstacles, temptations, debaucheries, and what Terry calls "the underneath."

One of the glowing examples of that ethereal feel to Tom Piccirilli's book is Terry's first meeting with Walton Endicott, the hit man. At a restaurant, Endicott offers his hand, almost a romantic gesture. Terry feels compelled to hold it across the table, like lovers or soulmates do, as he listens to a degenerate man discourse on what has caused the degeneration of our society.

What keeps Terry from running away again, abandoning his near or dear to their levels of hell? Why does he feel compelled to be their conduit for redemption? There's no logical answer, because in mythology, the hero in the end always decides to stay the course. The comfortless conclusion Terry draws is, "Even if you could save them they'd just turn on you and set fire to you in the end."

"The Last Kind Words" and "The Last Whisper in the Dark" is a two-act tragedy. Piccirilli's words capture Terry's heroism and fluttering optimism and his family's sense of tragic destiny so well. The books are elegiac and provoking. They are a tiny dose of tender comedy and a large cold serving of revenge.