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