**** 4 out of 5 Stars
Review by: Mark Palm
Dark, Darker, Darkest...

There are certain times when I feel compelled to explain why I read and like certain kinds of books. It used to happen a lot back when most Science Fiction and Fantasy books had cover art that made you wonder if the artist had ever even knew what the book was about, but it really happens the most now with works that fall into the noir category of the type that James M.Cain did so well. If you are not familiar with Mr. Cain’s works I suggest you go out and get them. While I am not quite ready to put him in the same company yet, if you want to get a similar feeling I suggest you read The Winter Girl by Matt Marinovich. It’s a compelling and suspenseful thriller that made me feel like taking a shower when I finished it. And that’s meant to be a compliment.

It’s winter, and Scott and his wife Elise have moved into the Hampton home of her terminally ill father, Victor, to wait for his inevitable death. Weeks and weeks pass by as Elise spends her time at the hospital with Victor while evading finding a new job as a speech therapist, and Scott pretends to work on his photography business while actually working through Victor’s extensive liquor cabinet. Their marriage is slowly but surely falling apart; Scott is incensed that Elise has been in touch with an old boyfriend and her incarcerated brother, and Victor, who is a bastard from the get-go, and abused Elise in the past, keeps calling Scott and taunting him over the phone.

One day Scott notices something: the lights in the empty house next door go off at exactly eleven each night. Although it’s almost certainly a timer Scott becomes obsessed, and eventually breaks in. This small transgression invigorates him, and soon he talks his unhappy wife into joining him in his new-found passion. The pair gets drunk and go over to the house together, and in a moment of passion, make a disturbing discovery that sets off a chain reaction of horrific discoveries about Victor, Elise, and Carmelita, the “Winter Girl”of the title. There is not much more I can say about the book without dropping a ton of spoilers, but I can tell you that if the first part the story of this couple's life was bad the second half is a disturbing and compelling train wreck.

As unlikeable as they are at first, each and every character become worse and worse, until you feel like you are caught up in a nest of vipers. Mr. Marinovich’s skill is that in spite of this, or just maybe because of it, the story becomes more and more riveting. As the revelations come faster and faster, and get progressively worse you know that there is no way that this story can end well, but by then you are caught up in the narrative flow, very much like the characters themselves, and I was looking to see just how bad things were going to get. And trust me, they get real, real bad. There are a lot of coincidences that fall just the right, (or wrong), way near the end, and it was a bit distressing to read a book in which just about every single person is despicable, but I just kept turning the pages, which earns Mr. Marinovich a serious tip of my cap.

More kudos for the ending, which was both surprising, inevitable, and in keeping with the rest of the novel, very, very dark. So if you like your noir, very noir, I suggest you read The Winter Girl. Just don’t expect a happy ending.

I am going to go get that shower now.

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