"As the night passes, the starless winter sky over the small Main
Line township of Radnor turns to an inky, fathomless black. The
roads become empty, drained of life. Even the highway on the
outskirts of town is soundless…. And when it seems that it
can't get any darker or quieter, the first bits of sunlight break
on the horizon. The light comes slowly at first, then more quickly.
You know what's coming next, but you don't know all of it."

Somewhere in the middle of this novel lies this wonderful paragraph
that subtly describes what STRANGE BUT TRUE is really about. This
book defies the rules, making it a challenge to fit it neatly into
a genre --- it's part mystery, part tragedy, part comedy, and part
simple slice of life. Well, not simple, really. Nothing about it is
simple. Nothing at all.

Ronnie Chase died the night of his senior prom. His mom has never
gotten over it, allowing herself to be overtaken by a meanness of
spirit that drives his father into the arms of another woman and
his older brother, Philip, into a new life in Manhattan. Five years
later, Philip has returned home to convalesce, unable to survive in
his fourth floor walkup with a full cast on his leg. In the middle
of a snowy, bitter night back in Radnor, a call comes from Ronnie's
high school sweetheart, Melissa Moody, a young woman still carrying
the scars of the accident that claimed her boyfriend's life. She
has a shocking revelation to share, and Philip and his mom react
each in their own disparate ways. What follows is a gradual
unfolding of a bizarre set of circumstances and the way each of the
characters deals with its effect on their lives.

Searles develops one mystery and then starts teasing you with
another, building it on top of the last. He has a unique style that
dishes out a hearty helping of details, giving even the most
insignificant bit player a healthy dose of dimension, yet somehow
does not overburden the story. He slowly --- almost infuriatingly
so --- feeds the tale to the reader; infuriating only in that the
writing is too good to merely skim through to get to the action. It
is at once a book of high drama followed by near maddening
inaction; rampant emotion followed by an almost exasperating
lethargy; searing intrigue followed by a falsely soothing calm
before the next storm --- a storm you know is coming. But you have
no inkling of the strength of it. Woven together are several lives
in a small Pennsylvania town, their interactions causing varying
degrees of harm and hope. Some merely cross paths, doing a
smattering of damage to one another. But no one comes out unscathed
in this darkly humorous novel full of human frailties.

In my reading of STRANGE BUT TRUE, I must have popped off an "Aha"
at least five times --- normally a sure five-star Amazon.com
rating, and it would have this time but for the ending, which
seemed to fall short of Searles's daring excellence throughout the
rest of the book. It seemed just a bit too tidy after a story of
such startling depth.