In the 1950s, the small Canadian town of Conawalki was forced to move to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Even by 1973, when Michael Saver’s LOST VILLAGE opens, the locals are trying to make sense of their new world: a town that somehow is and isn’t itself, populated both by people who remember old Conawalki and young people who only know the new way of life. In the summer of this year, a pair of murders rocks the small town, causing the close-knit community to question people they believed they know.

At the center of LOST VILLAGE are the Smart Boys: teens Mark, Flix, and Seb, all outcasts in their own ways. The free-spirited Seb cheerfully navigates his high-school life while standing up for his friends; Mark and Flix explore their growing feelings for each other in a world that considers them “wrong.” While police investigate the murder and the town attempts to prepare for a big anniversary party, the boys discover that the seemingly unconnected murder victims may have actually shared a tie after all. As old secrets come to light, the Smart Boys must balance their own lives and relationships with the threat bearing down on them from the shadows.

The strengths of LOST VILLAGE are twofold. First and foremost, it presents a strong setting in the fictional Conawalki, populating it with longstanding families and sketching out a unique background for it. (According to the author, while Conawalki itself is fictional, its movement to make way for the Seaway has happened to other towns.) The web of interlocking people and stories—from the drama at the heart of the local funeral home to the interactions of the local police—never feels like it’s going too far afield. Rather, these are all pieces of a larger puzzle, and every seemingly disparate story beat will contribute to the whole by the end.

The second strength of the book is, of course, the mystery at its heart. While the list of suspects is rather small, given the size of the cast, the mix of red herrings and lack of journalistic integrity make for an interesting journey to the truth. A clever enough investigator might pick up where the climax is heading, but is unlikely to land the exact solution.

If there is a weakness in LOST VILLAGE, it is that some of the dialogue feels a bit unrealistic. The interactions between characters are strong: the supportive Seb, the bullying Kenny, and the rest of the cast at the core are the sort of people readers will have met in life. Their motivations make sense—or, if they don’t make sense for moral reasons, they are (sadly) very real motivations that exist in the world. However, Saver occasionally slips into the trap of the characters speaking more like narration than like characters within the text, leading to their voices not sounding especially distinct from one another.

Even that flaw, however, is not enough to bring LOST VILLAGE down. Saver has created a truly inspired setting, encapsulating both social stigmas of the time and a bit of history that may be new to many readers. With a final chapter that hints at more to come, this story is a promising beginning to what will hopefully be a strong series.

Michael Saver’s LOST VILLAGE sets the stage for what promises to be a series of clever, tight-knit murder mysteries.

~Kara Dennison for IndieReader