Calliope Jenkins is woken up early by her current business partner/ex-boyfriend/ex-band mate Joshua White. The call was typical other than being at two am, he wanted to let her know he was on a case a would not be back when he was expected but just before the call cut off he warned her about "hidden things". Calli thought nothing of it so she went along her day which was beginning to really suck. First she was woken up early, then she breaks things off with her boyfriend and asks him to move out, now the police arrive at her detective agency. The day suddenly becomes her worst nightmare when the police inform her Josh was murdered. They ask her for information but all she has is a message he left on the work answering machine this morning, she plays it for them and they want to know what she is up to since it was recorder two hours after Josh died.
Calli's world keeps getting more bizarre when a homeless man continues to stalk her; he repeatedly insists he can help her with Joshua's homicide. Calli thinks that now that she sprayed him with mace and beat him back that he will leave her be. Then he turns up at a bar dressed as a clown introduces himself as Vikous and tells her he knows that Josh told her to see the "fat man" and he can take her to him. Despite her better judgment Calli lets Vikous take her to see the fat man who is more peculiar than her guide.
HIDDEN THINGS is a bizarre mystery. The main character Calli doesn't know what's going on for most of the book and that's kind of how I felt. On the other hand it was like driving up to an accident and just having to take a peek. The further I read the more insistent I was to find out what was going on and what the story was about. I had to know what happened to Josh, who or what was Vikous, and what does Calli's hometown of Iowa have to do with any of it?
HIDDEN THINGS is well written and definitely not a mystery you can solve quickly. I'm still not sure if I really liked the book or not. I can say that I would recommend it to people who like dark mysteries and other-worldly novels. For me I think I'm going to wait and see what author Doyce Testerman writes next and read it, and then someday I will go back and read HIDDEN THINGS again.
Watch out for the hidden things... That's the last thing Calliope Jenkins' best friend and former lover says to her before ending a 2 a.m. phone call from Iowa, where he's investigating a case she knows little about. Five hours later, she gets another call, this time from the police. Josh has been found dead, and foul play is suspected. Calliope is stunned. Especially when Josh leaves a message on her phone a few hours later. Spurred by grief and suspicion, she heads to Iowa herself, accompanied by a stranger who claims to know something about what happened to Josh and who can-maybe-help Calli get him back. The road home is not quite the straight shot she imagined. Josh was involved in something a lot more complicated than a teenage runaway or a deadbeat dad, and Calliope finds herself on a surreal road trip into-and behind-America's heartland, hounded by magical beings twisted by living too long just-out-of-sight, and the secret bogeymen in Calliope's own troubled past. It's a search for the truth about her friend's death and the road she needs to walk if she ever wants to stand on her own. If Calli's not careful, her worst teenage nightmares could come true: she might never make it out.
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