CYCLE A  |  Book 2

Music of Souls

PREVIEW | Music of Souls

Malory Ballantyne is perturbed.  Desmond Silk, Kari LaMarca's boss at the Centre for North American Studies (CNAS), has just given her a new assignment.  Its focus is a young historian, Lorelle Delambre, who was killed a year ago when she fell from a cliff.  At the time of her death, Lorelle was trying to write a narrative that would underpin a museum project CNAS is sponsoring.  The difficult challenge she faced was to come up with a way to integrate several disparate story ideas.  Desmond asked Kari to find out whether she succeeded.  And if so, how.

The coroner who reported on Lorelle's death was unable to say whether her fall was an accident or whether she was pushed.  It's a question Kari will inevitably find herself asking.  Malory is perturbed because he knows a great deal about Kari's past, and he's afraid of what she'll do if her inquiries cause her to finger a possible killer the police are unable to arrest owing to a want of hard evidence.

Malory already has his own list of possible killers.  At the top is Wendy Warfield, Lorelle's one-time lover.  Wendy has done work with the Lakota, and she sometimes refers to herself as the daughter of Crazy Horse.  Malory, thinking he could easily end up like George Armstrong Custer, doesn't want to get into a fight with her.  But this is proving to be difficult, because Wendy seems determined to pick a fight with him.

Malory is not only perturbed; he's also perplexed.  He's inadvertently found himself confronting a collection of mysteries, all of them embedded within a lattice of human relationships he can't fully grasp.  As he proceeds with his investigation, he comes to realize that he too has become a mystery, and he thinks he knows why.  It's because of Kari.  She has made him a mystery to himself.