Publisher's Synopsis
Gunnar Floss walks into a rural New England 24-hour diner at 4:54am. He approaches the local police chief, bleary-eyed after a long overnight. "I done it," Gunnar says. "I killed Mary." But it has to be joke. Gunnar's been harmless all sixty-two years of his life, collecting deposit bottles and eating salvage food alone in that old house his crazy father left behind. And his only connection to the supposed victim is the backwoods grade school they both attended, back when she was the daughter of town royalty and he was the unwashed outcast that everyone pitied. The joke is over when Mary McCaslin is found brutally murdered in Gunnar's barn. And when this insular New England town closes ranks around Gunnar, Chief Moran finds himself on the outside. Gunnar Floss Killed Mary McCaslin is filled with the complex characters and atmosphere of a Ruth Rendell or Louise Penney novel: the greasy diner, the snowy pine hills, and the rundown barn where Mary McCaslin now lies dead.
