Visits from the Drowned Girl starts out with a gripping idea as old as crime fiction: the bystander. Benny Poteat climbs communications masts for a living. One day, from the top of such a mast out in the back- country, he looks down and sees a girl set up a video-camera on a tripod by the side of a river. The girl, as he watches, powerless to intervene, takes off all her clothes in front of the camera, walks unhesitatingly into the rushing floodwater, and dis- appears from sight.
When Benny climbs down the mast and reaches the site of her suicide, he finds alongside her clothes a rucksack full of videotapes, and a business card. He knows he should call the police. But somehow he doesn’t. Instead, he takes the videos home and starts his own investigations. Benny is seduced by the ownership of a secret, by the scent of a mystery.
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