I was hooked from the first page of Wendy Hornsby's newest Maggie MacGowan mystery, The Color of Light. It opens as Maggie, now an investigative film maker, sits watching an old Super 8 movie taken by her father of a group of pre-teen girls walking down a street in Berkeley, California. Maggie was one of them. Her father happened to catch the group in a confrontation with the neighborhood bully, a confrontation that still left Maggie with guilt feelings even after thirty years. The film also brings back strong memories of the Vietnamese mother of one of her childhood friends who was brutally murdered on the very day that film was made.
Maggie is in Berkeley to clean out her family home after her father's death and her mother's move to southern California. She is something of a local celebrity after her success as a film maker, but Berkeley is still enough of a small town that families reside in the same houses as in Maggie's childhood, and her friends and their parents still hold secrets that were not apparent to the eyes of a child.
Protagonist Maggie MacGowan is trained to ask questions for her film work, and is not afraid to use her skills in solving a thirty year old murder. Beneath the tranquil surface of the quiet neighborhood of well-kept lawns, and Maggie's physics professor father's carefully designed flower bed with which he illustrated the principles of the visual spectrum, lie dangerous secrets. Maggie's high school boy friend turns up and nearly rekindles their old relationship, until the jealousy of his alcoholic wife can cause near-deadly consequences.
Author Hornsby writes with sensitivity about the complex, multi-ethnic character of Berkeley residents. Part mystery and party romance, The Color of Light had me turning the pages eagerly until the end, when the strands of a complex plot finally come together in a satisfying conclusion. (As published in Suspense Magazine)