Ever since I finished reading Vince Zandri’s “When Shadows Come,” I’ve been trying to find the words to do it justice. Zandri is probably best known for his hardboiled series featuring Albany PI Dick Moonlight. This stand-alone, however, shows what he can do when not constrained by either a specific milieu or character, and for my money, it’s the best piece of writing he’s ever done.
Not so long ago (a year?) I was among many of Vince’s Facebook friends who admired his posts and photos from Venice, Italy. Ever the intrepid world traveler, Vince was there, it turns out. to ad verisimilitude to “When Shadows Come.” But it’s not just the details and flavor of Venice that he captured on that trip by visiting the city in person. In fact, other books have imparted the feeling of being in Venice. Cornelia Funke’s “The Thief Lord” or Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series come to mind.
But the true realism Zandri found in Venice was in his characters, especially Captain Nick Angel, veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his fiancée, Grace. Nick is afflicted with hysterical blindness brought on by PTSD that comes and goes, and its during one of these bouts of sightlessness that Grace is kidnapped literally from under Nick’s nose. To find her, Nick must confront his own ghosts to learn how the tragedies of his past affect his present.
As tough a soldier as Nick is and has been, Zandri infuses him with emotional fragility and vulnerability. And for all their problems as a couple and the difficulty of dealing with Nick’s PTSD and its symptoms, Grace is his perfect counterpart, as tough as Nick when it comes to the things that matter most—love, loyalty, and the promise of a future filled with joy and hope.
On the surface, “When Shadows Come” is a riveting and suspenseful thriller that kept me turning the page long after I should have turned out the light. But at its heart, the novel is a tale of love and redemption. Yes, it sounds trite. And yes, you’ve read a hundred books about the redemptive power of love. But unless you’ve already finished the book, you haven’t read this story of how an emotionally broken man is saved by his love for a woman and her love for him. And the ride—both emotionally and for the thrills—is well worth the price of admission.
At times, I found myself chafing impatiently at Nick’s struggle, and wished that review sites offered the option of awarding tenths of stars. The few nits that bothered me made me think that “When Shadows Come” was not quite perfect. Maybe a 4.8-star book. But upon reflection, I realize that the things that made me literally yell at Nick to open his eyes and see what was so obvious to the reader were beyond his ken because of who he is and how his past has affected him. And that’s the result of Zandri’s masterful writing. Hell, I give it five enthusiastic stars.
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