Book Review--The Bay at Midnight, by Diane Chamberlain

This book was one of those books that I am sorry to finish, because it is so interesting.

At 53, Julie Sellers still feels guilt over what she sees as her part in her sister's murder 40 years earlier. Every summer she and her family visited the New Jersey shore, where they have a bungalow. In 1962, when she was 12 and her sister Isabel was 17, Isabel was murdered. The past is dredged up again when the daughter of Ethan Chapman (the next-door neighbor boy back then), pays Julie a visit. Ethan's older brother and Isabel's old boyfriend, Ned, had recently died. In cleaning out Ned's town house, Ethan and his daughter had found a note saying that the wrong person had gone to jail for Isabel's murder and that he wanted to set the record straight. The note provides no other details. They take the note to the police, who reopen the case.

Julie had never thought that George Lewis, the man who had gone to jail for murdering Isabel, was actually guilty. She believes that Ned was the killer. Ethan, who reenters Julie's life in a new way after a 40-year absence, is equally certain that his brother was not responsible for Isabel's murder.

The book alternates between Julie's point of view and those of her younger sister, Lucy, and her mother, Maria. It alternates between 1962, the present, and times in Maria's past, where a dark secret is revealed. Somehow it does this without being confusing; it couldn't have been easy to write. It's part mystery and partly a character development type of novel, with some romance thrown in, so there's something for everyone.