Book tells gripping tale of true crime story

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Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books written by Maine authors or set in the Pine Tree State.

FINDING AMY: A TRUE STORY OF MURDER IN MAINE, by Capt. Joseph K. Loughlin and Kate Clark Flora, University of New England Press, Hanover, N.H., 2006, 265 pages, hardback, $26.

Amy St. Laurent, 25, of South Berwick disappeared on Oct. 21, 2001, after an evening out in the Old Port section of Portland. The hardworking young woman with dark blond hair and blue eyes wasn’t an ordinary victim.

Despite all their training, the cops who worked the case couldn’t distance themselves from her or protect themselves from Amy’s story. That’s why the investigators who searched for her and, eventually, helped bring her killer to justice called her “Our Amy.” Some even kept her picture on their desks.

Few true crime books get behind the scenes and explain how homicide detectives do their jobs the way “Finding Amy” does. Even readers who followed the case as it unfolded in the hectic and emotionally draining weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks will discover new details and won’t be able to put the book down, even though they know how it ends.

Flora, a lawyer turned mystery writer, and Loughlin, a 24-year veteran of the Portland Police Department, paint an intensely vivid portrait of the investigation into St. Laurent’s disappearance and the prosecution of her killer, Jeffrey “Russ” Gorman. The authors don’t just take readers into the investigation, they take them inside the heads of the investigators.

A former assistant attorney general in Maine, Flora met McLaughlin when she sought advice on police procedures for a new detective series she was writing about a Portland detective. In meeting with him, McLaughlin often talked about the St. Laurent case, which was still under investigation. He mentioned that someday he would like to write about the young woman’s murder. Flora urged him to take careful notes.

Two years later, Flora, who has published several mystery novels, suggested they try collaborating to tell Amy’s story. Over the next 24 months, Flora often traveled from her home in Concord, Mass., to Portland. She read police reports, interviewed detectives, prosecutors, and game wardens, all the while working to imagine the crime as the investigators had.

Few crimes in Maine achieve enough notoriety to attract a publisher’s attention. A recent exception was the arsenic poisoning three years ago at a small church in Aroostook County.

“A Bitter Brew: Faith, Power, and Poison in a Small New England Town” was published last year before the case was officially closed by the Maine State Police. Author Christine Ellen Young failed miserably at putting readers in the middle of that investigation.

Unlike the scenes created for “Bitter Brew,” the conversations among investigators in “Finding Amy” ring true, even down to the curse words. Young’s book included fictionalized conversations among investigators, probably because the case was still being investigated. The Monmouth author even went so far as to give the detectives the names of convicted killers.

In “Bitter Brew,” the investigators constantly searched for a motive. Real cops follow the evidence and their instincts, as “Finding Amy” so vividly shows. One of the reasons motive is not very important to cops is because under Maine law it doesn’t have to be presented to a jury or a judge. Investigators meticulously check and recheck the timeline and religiously document the chain of evidence because that is what the law requires for a conviction.

Although “Finding Amy” is a compelling read, it is not perfect. The book needed a better editor to take out repetitious information. The reproductions of the crime scene photos are woefully inadequate and most likely would not have been shown to a jury. Inserting a few glossy pages for photo reproduction would have solved the problem.

In addition to a good editor, the authors could have used a fact checker. In the epilogue, the authors refer to how the warden service assisted the state police in “finding the body of David Langley, in Glenburne.” The victim’s last name was Langway and there is no “e” on the end of Glenburn.

While it is a seemingly small error that doesn’t pertain to St. Laurent’s story, it could make attentive readers question the accuracy of the entire book.

Despite its flaws, “Finding Amy” tells an absorbing tale about how the police do what they do in the real world rather than on television crime shows, where the budget for staffing and equipment appears to be limitless. It also shows how territorial disputes between local, county and state law enforcement agencies can be set aside when the goal is finding a murder victim like Amy and bringing her killer to justice.

BY JACK WILDE

SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

RAINY, by Sis Deans; Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2005; 199 pages, hardback, $16.95.

You know that feeling you get when you go someplace completely new, and you know you’re going to be there for a very long time? How you get butterflies in your stomach, and knots in your throat? Well Sis Deans, author of the novel “Rainy,” captures that feeling well through 10-year-old Rainy Tucker, who is unwillingly dragged to a summer camp. The main character has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and is nervous about staying in a strange new place.

Rainy has trouble keeping track of her things and staying focused. She depends on her family, and when she is suddenly pulled out of that world where everything is handed to her, she finds it hard to have to take care of herself.

Rainy and her family (her dad, mom, and sister) drive two hours from Portland to Camp Megunticook. The camp for girls runs all summer long, and she can’t have any contact with her family or anyone outside of the camp, except through letters which Rainy receives often from her sister, Jewel.

Rainy immediately gets herself into trouble when she arrives at the camp and wanders off. She also meets her first friend, Vanessa, and some enemies, three mean girls who don’t like her because of her disorder and the things she does because of it, like restlessness that keeps the girls awake at night.

After a few troublesome days, she then meets a group of people and becomes fast friends with them. Rainy feels much more comfortable when she knows she has some friends of her own that she can trust.

While she’s at Camp Megunticook, Rainy learns to take care of her own things and herself. She knows her family isn’t there to guide her through it all. But it does not mean her ADHD is cured.

Of course, there is one thing imprinted on her mind that she can’t forget: the mountain across the lake. On the mountain is a huge white cross put there in memory of a girl who had fallen off the cliffs and died. Rainy’s strong urge to go to that mountain and find that cross overcomes her. Her journey to the mountain is her great adventure.

Sis Deans does an excellent job of delivering what is happening inside Rainy’s head all the time, and she does it in a very warm, thoughtful way. “Rainy” is a short book, but exciting and simply enough written to appeal to many seventh- and eighth-grade kids, especially those who face problems like Rainy’s.

Sis Deans lives in Gorham. Her books include “Racing the Past,” “His Proper Post: A Biography of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,” and “Decisions and Other Stories,” which won a Maine Chapbook Award.

Jack Wilde is a freshman at Mount View High School in Thorndike.