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Reviewed by Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite
Sinner’s Prayer by Dwain Lee is the second book in the Dan Randolph/Greg Zhu mysteries. Plumbers discover a skeleton in a concrete trench beneath the youth room floor of the Parkvale Presbyterian Church in Louisville. It is the remains of a former youth leader and elder of the church, Steve Brighton, who disappeared in the autumn of 1985 without a trace. Former architect Dan Randolph, now a pastor, helps Detective Bryan Thomas in the case and quickly learns that Steve Brighton, once considered a model parishioner, was a monster: many teens suffered abuse from him, especially Mark Mackenzie. When 54-year-old Mark Mackenzie dies by suicide in Pennsylvania, Dan understands the two deaths are linked. The congregation is forced to face crimes of stolen innocence, buried sins, and cowardice from the leaders. Can there be any healing for this community shattered by painful revelations?
Dwain Lee’s prose is excellent, with measured sentences and timely paragraph breaks. The curated playlist and musical chapter headings capture the characters’ moods and make the storytelling more creative, from Barber’s sorrow to the Beatles’ nostalgia and Prokofiev’s urgency. The characters are sophisticated, and Dan and Greg are portrayed in the context of a marriage described with humor, especially in their meditations at the goldfish pond, “finger scale” banter, and domestic rituals. Mark Mackenzie’s abuse is terrifying, and the author explores his psyche, the fear and the torment in a way that infuses the story with both pathos and humanity. Sinner’s Prayer features a vividly drawn setting with Louisville’s political texture, Parkvale’s architecture, and the bureaucratic machinery of the Presbyterian Church. It is a story of a reckoning with complicity, abuse, and redemption.
