Killing Neptunes Daughter

Cape Island Mystery #1

by Randall Peffer

Noelle Werlin, the beautiful wife of a rock 'n' roll legend, was never able to shake the ghosts of her past, but dying at the hands of one of those ghosts never crossed her mind. In Woods Hole on Cape Cod, Noelle grew up as Neptune de Oliveira's daughter Celestina-otherwise known as Tina the Tease. Changing her name and running away to New York as a teenager, she thought she could run away from her life of unspeakable sexual depravity on the cape. Tina's body is found with a marlin spike through her heart, raped, and sliced up. Her cocaine addicted, philandering, rockstar husband, Butch Werlin, is the NYPD's primary suspect. But the morbid class reunion of childhood boyfriends who congregate for Tina's funeral think other-wise. They think the murderer is actually from Woods Hole, and that somehow their high school buddy Billy Bagwell has been at the center of some gruesome web since their teenage years. This psycho-thriller carries Billy Bagwell deeper and deeper into long-repressed memories of 35-year-old crimes from the days when Billy was known as "Bagger, the crazy Bagman." As the days grow darker, Billy finds himself caught in a turbulent tide of past homoerotic encounters, lost innocence, rage, religion and lust. Randall Peffer is the author of Watermen, Logs of the Dead Pirates Society and six travel guides. His writing has appeared in Smithsonian , Reader's Digest , National Geographic , New York Times , Washington Post , San Francisco Examiner , Chicago Tribune and others. This is his first novel.

268 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2004

About the author

Randall Peffer is the author of over 300 travel-lifestyle features for magazines like National Geographic, Smithsonian, Reader's Digest, Travel Holiday, Islands and Sail; he teaches writing and literature at Philips Academy in Andover.

Reviews

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really like this book! I think the author toes the line of the whole 'damaged manic pixie dream girl' trope while also making the characters well developed and interesting. I loved the writing style. I think the ending is a little convoluted and confusing, but altogether I found the book very well written. To be fair though I'm biased because Im actually from the location of the book so it was really funny to see all the references to the places I grew up around.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.7 *

[Betty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like gritty mysteries and especially like books set in places with which I'm familiar, as is the case here. I nearly put this one down after page two however, as I struggled to cope with the writer's style which included lots of sentence fragments, passive voice and some evidence the piece could have used some better editing. Ready to dismiss the quality of the writing, I turned to the author's bio on the jacket and discovered he teaches/taught writing at Andover/Phillips and is widely published which made me reflect upon the possibility that the style (if not the lack of editing) was intentional. So I hung in there and was rewarded enough with what I would consider a great beach read. In fact, after just a few more pages when the murder central to the story occurs, I was gritting my teeth and hardly noticed any of the same quirks that so bothered me in the first few turns. It's a quick book, and the writer's style holds up better in the heat of the more richly delivered, action filled and tumultuous scenes than it does in the more reflective parts of the book, I think. The description of "gritty" doesn't really do it justice either -- the characters' secrets in this book and the manner in which they are revealed-- are not for the faint of heart. Raw, dangerous, sex and angst-filled would be better descriptions. The story had some hiccups--the complete lack of any appearance, or even mention, of NYC law enforcement or inquiry in the town--the lack of an appearance or even the effort to explain the absence of the victim's husband at the funeral...a few things like that that struck me odd. The climax at the end was satisfying, but the very ending between friends over one's sexual identity seemed oddly placed--I think would have been better addressed earlier in the story and would have liked to get a glimmer of Billy and Becky's future (or lack thereof) at the end of the story.