Bruce Fergusson Volgorde van de boeken

The summer trip to England, Scotland and Ireland was supposed to be a 'roots' trip for the Kincaid family from upstate New York, where ten-year-old Thomas likes to do three things in particular: play baseball, read, and horse around with his dog, Grendel. At the ruins of an Irish castle, Thomas comes across what looks like a Thanksgiving dinner napkin ring or maybe a neckerchief slide, the kind his older sister Emma wears to Scout meetings. It's not what you'd expect to find at a place like this, but someone must have lost it. He figures there must be a Lost and Found in the caretaker's office/museum, right over there in the keep, which is the only intact part of the castle. So Thomas picks up the whatever-it-is....

Falca Breks, a rapparee from Draica, left much in the northern wilderness of the Rough Bounds-the riches and renown that could have been his had he stayed at the lake-isle fortress of Scaldasaig he captured, against all odds, from traitorous Wardens of Lucidor. He also left something else that no measure of fortune or fame could have replaced. By choice or not, he'd lost everything. So when Falca decided to head farther south, he cautioned himself to keep his expectations low: when you undertake a long, solitary journey through the past and two of the Six Kingdoms to find a woman you've never met before-who may not even still be alive-and tell her the bitter-sweet truth of what happened to a man she once loved and believed tragically lost, who had become like a father to you...well, you've got to be prepared for things not to go the way you hoped. But Falca could never have prepared for what he found in fabled Milatum, the city he'd often dreamed about escaping to as an orphaned youth in Draica, that tough Lucidorian seaport where the only legend available to him was as a crouch-alley reiver, street buster and dock-heave. Only days after his arrival Falca was desperate to move on yet again-and quickly-though still far from realizing that sometimes escaping is the only way to find what you never knew you were looking for all along.

James Malloy has had his share of troubles, beginning with his father's abandonment of his family, the fragile mental health of his wayward brother, Sean-and the sudden, violent end to Malloy's dreams of a major league baseball career. When he meets and falls in love with Katie Walsh, the skies open. But not for long. Shortly after the two become engaged, Katie disappears. Many months pass before he learns-in the most shattering way possible-what happened to her. James Malloy's ensuring hunt for Katie's murderer-and the chance discovery of his missing brother's shocking, long-kept secret-will lead Malloy to the remote mountain cabin of an artist named Helen Sommers and entangle him in a private obsession that spans time and distance and puts them both in the path of a vicious, demented killer.