The Last Stone by Mark Bowden is a recommended study of a cold-case interrogation that took more than a year and solved the mystery. This title was my introduction to author Mark Bowden. (I'm behind on my research.) I was impressed with his approach and top shelf writing. The book takes on a case involving the kidnapping, torture and murder of two little girls, Sheila Lyon and Kate Lyon, who vanished from a mall in 1975. The author handles the most difficult case imaginable with delicacy. I like his tight storytelling very much along with expressions of deepest empathy that are not maudlin. There is a finished quality to his narrative, digested might be a better word, reflecting that the author has considered the subject in depth. And I like any author who drops a sweet vocabulary note with a word like cajolery. At times he reminds me of Joseph Wambaugh. Here is a quote from the boo The scene is the suspect being interrogated by the cold case squad and making a critical admission:
“Now that he had admitted knowing something of what happened to Sheila and Kate, he claimed to be haunted by it – a thing he’d denied for months. Lloyd made these shifts with no apparent sense of how false they sounded. He had no ear for it. 'It’s gonna bug the shit out of me until the day I die,' he said, a comment so hollow it echoed.”
Author Bowden does not shy from mentioning some investigatory missteps, though he pulls his punches. I nitpick when I mention that I did wince a time or two at some descriptions of "hillbillies" (“Wes was a plumber, and looked like one, disheveled…”) (Some of us Midwesterners in particular maybe have protective feelings about our Appalachian cousins.)
I liked the placement of photos in this book. One picture appears at the start of each chapter. A nod to the book designer for that. Aside from the interrogation of the man who would ultimately admit his guilt, the book delves into a question that pops up halfway through and to me is even more interesting: How could an entire family perjure themselves for a child sex killer? The man who killed two little girls was aided by his kin. An entire family covered up a grotesque crime. I could have done with more details on their motives, but maybe there were no more to be had.
Concise as well as fluid, this author's voice is impressive, and I look forward to his next foray into my end of the true crime pond.
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