Dance for the Dead – Thomas Perry

Tim is six, but has already lived through more tragedy than most people ten times his age – coming home with his nanny, Mona, from an after-school shopping expedition he finds the bloody bodies of his parents. All trace that Tim ever lived in the house is gone, and the killers are coming back for him.
Unbeknown to Tim, the couple he knew as his parents kidnapped him when he was two and raised him as their own. His real parents were killed in a car accident, and Tim is the sole heir to an estate worth millions. His only chance for safety, and his inheritance, is for him to appear in court during the hearing to have him declared dead – and someone who stands to gain all that money, and lose even more, will stop at nothing to prevent Tim appearing.
In most novels this would be the primary plot, but in Perry’s masterful hands this is all back story – Dance for the Dead opens with the judge presiding over the case listening to Tim’s taped account of not only the discovery of the bodies but how Mona and her lawyer boyfriend Dennis, with the help of a mysterious woman named Jane, brought him safely to court, though not without cost – Mona and Dennis were killed in the attempt, and Tim is still nowhere near out of danger.
This is the second in the brilliant Jane Whitefield series about a Senecca woman who helps people in trouble find new, safe lives. In Dance for the Dead, among the stories of both Tim and Mary, a woman Jane meets in prison, a little more of the tantalising story of Jane and her history and culture emerges. We are given insights into the shadowy worlds of people rescuers, con artists, high finance in an age of post-Reagan deregulation, and the use of dreams as a problem solving process.
This series stands out from others in the genre not only because of the deft writing, quicksilver plotting and beautiful characterisation but the oblique and interesting education about another cultural way of being. As I wrote in my previous Perry review (of Shadow Woman, the third Jane Whitefield novel), I have the same feeling when I read Faye Kellerman’s novels, where detail about the daily lives of Orthodox Judaism is similarly inserted. I come away from these novels feeling reassured that, despite the evil in the world, there are good people making a real difference – Jane herself, Judge Kramer, and Mona and Dennis, who knew going in that they were at risk, and did it anyway. As Jane says:

“An innocent little boy is going to die. You’re either somebody who will help him, or somebody who won’t. For the rest of your life you’ll be somebody who did help him, or somebody who didn’t.”

This is truly great. - Alex