Product Description
Seventy years old, ill, and bent by the ravages of time and loss of self-respect, Old Jerry wants to die. Charlie Simpkins, Old Jerry's grandson, is a petty crook with a taste for trouble, alcohol, and the wrong sort of women; his older brother, P.T., is sweetly naive and very troubled and could just possibly be convinced that such a death would be a kindness. But when Old Jerry fails to show up for his birthday party and later turns up dead, Charlie wants to deflect attention from P.T. He takes the rap, leaving P.T. and a group of close friends behind, and serves in Vietnam to avoid prison time. Several years later, Charlie returns, angry and dangerous with a new wife and lingering nightmares from the war. He finds that his brother is living happily in a halfway house, his ex-girlfriend is gone, and another friend is married.A small and isolated world-a world where laws and taboos are broken on a daily basis, and family loyalty replaces moral accountability. Lisa Reardon's new novel is a deeply involving and satisfying story that illustrates just how far fear can drive us, and where love can sometime send us. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lisa Reardon is simply amazing!
Blameless and Billy Dead were both so touching and honest that I wrote to Lisa via her website.Not only did she write me back, but she asked for my address and mailed me a free signed copy of The Mercy Killers! She is as kind as she is talented.Thank you Lisa for your amazing novels which have enriched my life!

Another Triumph
I find it amazing how Lisa Reardon can put a voice to a population we see every day but never see.With out falsely glorifying, Lisa takes the story of the people who live day by day, making the choice to survive regardless if it is the right choice.I'm too young to remember the Vietnam era but I do know many bars like the one portrayed, and she hits the culture right on. When one has no family, they find family where they can.Lisa has a real knack for dialog and makes each person an identity instead of a stereotype.As before, I loved this book and can't wait for the next.

Mercy Killers
Once again Lisa Reardon makes us feel passionately about characters that inhabit the dark, sad underbelly of society. It is a talented writer that makes you cry and laugh on the same page and root for people for whom we usually distain in real life.Her writing is sad and hopeful and so true it makes your heart ache.I couldn't put this one down until it was finished and it left me wanting these characters to make it.Bravo Lisa, this one's your best yet! ... Read more

Product Description

"The night turned blacker and colder. I switched off the car radio. I had a home to go to. I had locks on my doors. But just outside were dark hungry shapes that had once had names like Hero or Jack. Muzzles that used to nudge someone's hand for a pat now sniffed the air for prey. People walked away from the things they were responsible for, like those things weren't going to come back in the middle of the night and tear your throat open. I rolled up the window against the chill. Lit another cigarette with my head pounding like a kettledrum. The Merc rolled toward home."

Mary Culpepper is a strong woman, fearless and independent to a fault. But when she discovers the body of a child in her small northern Michigan town, she suffers a breakdown that has family and friends treating her like "sulfuric acid about to spatter." In the following months Mary does all she can to keep her mind off the upcoming trial, in which she will have to tell what she did--and did not--witness. It's a time when she most needs her best friend, Amy, whose history of lies and betrayal Mary is not willing to face. As the trial looms closer, and Mary's past catches up to her, not even the heated passion of an illicit affair can fend off the presence of the Night Visitor, a monster of stone and silence who destroys her sleep.

One young girl has already been sacrificed to the Culpepper legacy of willful blindness. Now another girl lies in the path of danger, another girl about to suffer the consequences of someone choosing to shut her eyes and remain blameless. But when Mary attempts to break the chain of betrayal, the resulting explosion could destroy all that she has sought to protect.

Following Billy Dead, which Alice Munro called a "brave, heart-wrenching debut," Blameless combines the emotional resonance of Sue Miller's The Good Mother with the gripping suspense of Chris Bohjalian's Midwives. A story of tender humor, violent passion, and a fierce exploration of moral accountability, it will pull you in, unable to look away until its last unforgettable page.Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, June 2000: After reading a strong debut, I am always eager to see the author's next offering. Will it live up to the potential of that first book, or will that book remain a flash of brilliance, never to be equaled? No worries here. Reardon's first book, Billy Dead, was an outstanding first novel in a year of excellent first novels, and her second book more than confirms that we have a major new talent in our midst.

While not a mystery in the strictest sense of the word, there is a killing. Blameless, however, is not about who did it, or even why. It is about the effect that killing has on one member of the community: the woman who discovered the body. Mary Culpepper, a school-bus driver, is strong, fearless, independent, and seemingly in command of her life. Sure, her husband left her for her best friend, but she's over that, and when the novel opens, Mary is waiting to testify in the death of one of her charges. She will have to take the stand and tell what she witnessed. As Mary tries to keep her mind off the upcoming trial, she enters into an affair with a local guy who plays softball with her. A dream man, except that he's the father of another of her charges.

All this drama does nothing to keep away the Night Visitor, the stone monster who, each night, climbs onto Mary's chest and destroys her sleep. As we get to know Mary, we understand that she, like many of us, chooses very carefully what she does and does not witness. Layer by layer, Reardon peels away the protective covering that Mary has grown until the explosive finale when Mary will have to come to terms with her past and the way she has chosen to live her life. This novel explores moral accountability and the way we all look away from what we don't want to see, and in that way Blameless is both profoundly disturbing and utterly compelling. --Otto Penzler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

An Amazing Read
I just finished reading this novel for the second time, and I remain perplexed by the fact that the book was never issued in paperback.Aside from the entertaining and hard-hitting plot, there were two aspects of this work that I especiallly appreciated.First, there is hardly any exposition.Even though the narration is in the first person, Reardon makes the reader work a bit.We spend some time saying "Wait a minute: is her best friend's husband, Carl, the same as her ex-husband Carl? How did that happen?" By the time she explains it, we've pretty much pieced together the clues and figured it out ourselves.Second, the book is both dark and funny, yet the humor is not dark.My only minor criticism is that I believe the fatal car accident was not necessary.The conflicts and resolutions that follow could have easily taken place without it.The accident gives this otherwise subtle, believable story a slight melodramatic edge.

Great author!Definitely worth a read.
I got this book because I was at a reading of Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday and he recommended the author.However, after I got it I let it sit on my shelf for six months.When I finally did pick it up I found myself disliking it and decided I would read the obligatory 50 pages and then discard it.On page 50 it grabbed my attention and held it, more or less consistently, throughout.Lisa Reardon is a very talented writer.She has little gems of phrasing that twinkle up at you, and she writes with emotion in ways I have not experienced before.I really connected with some of the parts of this story, and enjoyed the characters.I definitely recommend this book and am looking forward to reading her other novel, Billy Dead.

Compelling
Blameless is the story of Mary Culpeper, a bus driver living in a small town in Michigan.Mary is a strong woman - she lives alone, plays softball, and enjoys nights out at her favorite bar.However, as the book begins, she feels as though she is losing her strength.Mary is awaiting a murder trial.She is not the defendant, but the witness for the prosecution, expected to tell how she found the body of a small child on her bus route.Her distress at the impending trial is disturbing her sleep, and causing her to do things very out-of-character, such as beginning an affair with a married man.

Ultimately, this is a book about Mary's search for truth.She must face up to the truth about what happened to the murdered girl, her family's past, and the importance of relationships to her.This search for truth is, in the end very compelling, and an important read for anyone looking for similar things in their life.

Unlike the others, I was very disappointed.
Though Billy Dead was one of the best works of fiction I have ever read, Reardon's sincerity is lost in her latest.

She is trying altogether too hard.

I found myself, sadly, desiring to skip entire paragraphs and when I did, I missed nothing. Then I did the unthinkable. About 80 pages in I skipped to the last two chapters just to get it over with.

Much like overacting, she is over exerting herself as she tries to develop believable, empathy evoking characters.

Had I never read Billy Dead, I would not read her again. But knowing the talent of which she is capable, I await her next work, with hopes that she relaxes and tells me a story that compels me to read every word.

a magical book!
This is a beautifully written and seductively compelling book. Author Reardon is a truly extraordinary storyteller and she weaves her words beautifully. The dialogue is moving and the narrative text which supports the dialogue is mesmerizing. The story is good. Mary's indoctrinated tendencies to turn a blind eye to the truth are beautifully explored in this compelling and delicious novel. ... Read more

Product Description
In an everyday voice, still as the air before thunder, Billy Dead introduces Ray Johnson and his kin. In their small Michigan town, the Johnsons are the family that starts all the trouble, has all the hard luck, and fuels all the gossip. Ray's older brother Billy has just been found murdered--by someone who watched him crawl a mile down the road, head bloody; who smoked four Marlboros while watching Billy die. The question isn't who killed him, but who didn't want him dead. Now Ray--knotted up with sorrow and a strange relief--bears the weight of the town's curious gaze as they dredge up all the past he's been trying to live down. But Ray insists on telling his own story, one of shameful abuse transfigured by impossible love: shocking, violent, tender, and redemptive in ways we have never known before.Lisa Reardon reshapes the American landscape of Annie Dillard's The Living and Peter Matthiessen's Killing Mr. Watson in this novel of shocking depths and soaring heights--and Ray Johnson emerges as one of the most heartrending and endearing characters in recent literature.Amazon.com Review
So, you find out one day that your brother has just beenkilled, brutally murdered in fact, by someone who seemed to take calmdelight in watching him die slowly, agonizingly. The thing is, you canthink of dozens of people who wished Billy harm, and a few who verywell might have done it, including members of your own family.

Such is the situation of Ray Johnson, the narrator of Lisa Reardon's first novel, Billy Dead, as we begin a gut-wrenching trip into thepast of an American family that's about as unappetizing as you will find. A relativelydecent, tender man who's spent much of his life trying to keep out ofharm's way, Ray has managed to cobble together a pretty good existenceof steady job and thoughtful, intelligent girlfriend, Sally... untilnow. As he ranges around town in a surreal haze in the days followingBilly's murder, meeting up with ghosts from the past, and interactingwith various and sundry family members (including a mother who flirtswith an old boyfriend in sight of her son's coffin), Ray realizes justhow much he remains shackled to a past chock full of domestic abuse,alcoholism, incest, and just plain meanness.

While Billy's death seems a just, but unavoidable, conclusion to anasty existence--"Somebody took that thing full of mean and made itnothing at all"--maybe he was the lucky one. For Ray, the killingpulls into sharp relief the hell on earth that is his when he realizeshis only life passion is his forbidden love forhis younger sister, Jean: "All the hurt and confusion about Billybeing killed is like a big forest fire that's burned througheverything in me. Burned clean through all the underbrush of when wewere little, all the deadwood memories. Even the big strong trees thatI thought would live forever, blocking all the sun ... Jean and me,we're looking at each other now in that empty, burned-out place."

In a narrative that explores in terrifying detail the violent natureof Jean and Ray's past and the poignant truth of their love, Reardoncreates a skillful and credible tale. This is a hard,in-your-face kind of book that takes you for a disturbing ride,and finally asks you to reexamine your notions of what is and what is notright when it comes to affairs of the heart. --Marianne Painter ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Poetic Rendering of Tragedy
This book is a poetic rendering of a poor dysfunctional 'white trash' family where physical, sexual, emotional abuse and incest abound.

Someone has murdered brother Billy, a person so mean that there's many a soul who could have done it despite the slow and tortured death he suffered.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Ray, the younger brother, whose solace from trauma is his forbidden love for his sister Jean.

The abuse in this story is unimaginable and vivid.It brought me to tears.

Occasionally stomach churning
Some authors just have the ability to make your skin crawl, and Ms. Reardon appears to be firmly in that category. This is not a horror story by any means (at least, not in the classic sense), but as you read the feeling of dread and horror heightens until the end, and even then you have a difficult time shaking off the unclean feeling you have. I believe that the ability to invoke this feeling is the sign of an excellent author, and so I rated the book five stars. The plot is like a runaway freight train going downhill and gaining speed with each foot it crosses. There are times you just want to cover your eyes, or close the book and give your senses a rest, but you soldier on, anxious to find out what happens at the end. Highly recommended!

Haunting--This book tore my heart out.
This is a great book and author.Shows how family abuse and secrets can tear lives apart.

Brutally honest and heart wrenching
This book is among the best I've ever read-- and I'm an avid reader.The author uses the voice of the brother of a dead man to tell the story of a highly dysfunctional family-- spoken from the perspective of a boy (now man) trying to cope with memories of physical, verbal, and sexual abuse.Her writing style is unique but quite appealing and helps the reader relate to the story teller even more.Somehow, he makes sense of his world and though his ultimate choice isn't exactly appropriate, you can understand how he got to it.As a psychologist, I found her portrayal of these characters to be brutally honest and it's a wonder the author hasn't experienced similar abuse herself since she speaks of the damage so accurately.

Wow...
GREAT book.Controversial, but amazing, I recommend it to anyone.I look forward to reading blameless by the same author... ... Read more