Black Hour

Written by Lori Rader-Day

Narrated by Xe Sands and Andrew Eiden

For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic--until a student she'd never met shot her.

He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why?

All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction ends in tears (hers). Her fellow faculty members seem uncomfortable with her, and her ex—whom she may or may not still love—has moved on.

Enter Nathaniel Barber, a graduate student obsessed with Chicago's violent history. Nath is a serious scholar, but also a serious mess about his first heartbreak, his mother's death, and his father's disapproval.  Assigned as Amelia's teaching assistant, Nath also takes on the investigative legwork that Amelia can't do. And meanwhile, he's hoping she'll approve his dissertation topic, the reason he came to grad school in the first place: the student attack on Amelia Emmet.

Together and at cross-purposes, Amelia and Nathaniel stumble toward a truth that will explain the attack and take them both through the darkest hours of their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780062888907

Lori Rader-Day

Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award–nominated and Anthony, Agatha, and Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is cochair of the mystery readers’ conference Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. She served as the national president of Sisters in Crime in 2020.

Reviews for Black Hour

[col2910_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Synopsis/blurb…….For sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic—until a student she’d never met shot her. He also shot himself. Now he’s dead and she’s stuck with a cane and one question she can’t let go: Why her? All she wants is for life to get back to normal. Better than normal, actually, since life was messy before she was shot. Then graduate student Nathaniel Barber offers to help her track down some answers. He’s got a crush and his own agenda—plans to make her his killer dissertation topic. Together and at cross-purposes, Amelia and Nathaniel stumble toward a truth that will explain the attack and take them both through the darkest hours of their lives."You know how wonderful it is to find a novel that you hate to put down? Lori Rader-Day's debut was just such a book for me. From its breathtakingly beautiful prose to its artful, escalating suspense, The Black Hour kept pulling me back for just one more page, one more chapter."-JULIE HYZY, New York Times-bestselling author"A terrific whydunnit! This dark page-turner of a puzzle-well-written, with bite and style and edge and simmering conflict-will keep you riveted from page one."-HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author"A riveting, ingenious first novel…. The Black Hour will linger with you weeks after you've read it."-SCOTT BLACKWOOD, Whiting Award-winning author of See How Small"Utterly compelling. The question at the heart of The Black Hour is original and engrossing, and I defy anyone not to devour the book to get to the answer…. A triumph."-CATRIONA MCPHERSON, author of As She Left ItAnother debut novel for me here and another mystery set in the world of academia, with the fictional setting of Rothbert University, a prestigious establishment at its heart. Our story is delivered by dual narrators. Firstly, Amelia Emmet as we pick up with her on her return to work, 10 months after being shot by a student, who then turned his gun on himself. Emmet is interesting as a character. She’s by turns, deserving of our sympathy as she struggles with the realities of her physical disability in the aftermath of the incident as well as the emotional distress she feels, especially returning to the scene of the crime. At other points she irritates and annoys with her treatment of those around her. On the whole mostly sympathetic, by virtue of her victim status but not really likeable. She’s flawed which is what makes her credible.Our second narrator is Nathaniel Barber. He’s a post-graduate student, who has a bit of an obsession with violent crime and a fixation on Amelia’s shooting in particular. He wrangles his way into a job as Emmet’s teaching assistant. This comes across as a bit creepy, until we learn more about him. He’s a bit of a loner, is dis-connected from his father and still dealing with the aftermath of his mother’s death a year or so ago and the more recent break-up with his girlfriend. Less interesting than Amelia, but more sympathetic.At the heart of the mystery is the quest for an explanation behind the shooting, which the police have decided was random. Both our narrators seek answers and have a common purpose in finding answers.We are introduced to other professors and students at the university. We see the interactions between the teaching fraternity – the jealousies, the friendships, the barely concealed animosities and the competitiveness. There’s the head of department – a former love interest of Amelia’s, who has now married; there’s a reporter, traipsing around the campus, dogging Nath and Amelia; there’s the idle rich, silver-spooned, sailor-dude student and there’s the aloof and controlling co-ordinator of the student counselling service, designed to help depressed and suicidal, especially during The Black Hour.Overall an enjoyable book, that had me flipping between suspects as it reached the climax.4 from 5Thanks to Meghan at Seventh Street Books for my copy.

[amandanan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Struck by how real the protagonist’s struggles with the aftermath of being a victim of a violent crime felt.

[josephking6602 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A nice book.....good to the point of making me want to read some of her other books. Good characterizations; nice narrative descriptions of settings etc. All-around, a pretty good read!

[jfe16 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Shot some ten months ago, sociology professor Amelia Emmet is struggling to recover, both in body and in mind. She barely remembers the attack, she didn’t know the shooter, and she has no idea what caused the young man to attack her and then commit suicide. When she returns to the university, Nathaniel “Nath” Barber becomes her teaching assistant. Unable to let go of the past, Amelia seeks answers about the attack. Will she be able to confront her issues in order to uncover the truth?Although Amelia is not particularly likeable, she and the other characters are well-drawn as is the university setting. Readers may find themselves caught up in the twists and turns as the plot unfolds, leading to an unexpected surprise ending.Recommended.

[maydacat_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This tense suspense novel is a study of what happens when a professor who teaches about violence and its effect actually becomes a victim of a violent act. Dr. Amelia Emmet, shot by a student on the campus where she teaches, is back at work after nearly a year of recuperation. Still suffering from the aftereffects of the attack, she hobbles about with the help of a cane and pain-relieving pills. But almost worse than the actual act is not knowing why – why a student she never had in class, indeed, did not even know, shot her and then himself. Adding to this mystery is a TA who comes to assist Dr. Emmet, but unbeknownst to her, is really there to study her for his own purposes. Much of novel is a psychological progression of fact combined with theory that slowly but surely narrows the path down to a single suspect and reason behind the shooting. A riveting read with a well-plotted intricate storyline and well-developed characters, this thriller will keep you turning pages until its surprising conclusion.

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Nothing in this book was even remotely close to what academia is like. I couldn't get into it.

[bookappeal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dr. Amelia Emmet, a professor specializing in the sociology of violence, returns to her teaching position at elite Rothbert University on the shores of Lake Michigan ten months after she was shot and badly injured by a student she did not know who then committed suicide. Amelia, still in considerable physical pain and relying on a cane, is also emotionally traumatized. When Nathaniel Barber, a grad student from Indiana, asks to be her TA, she's tempted to refuse but knows she will need the help. What she doesn't know is that Nath chose Rothbert specifically to study Dr. Emmet. When Amelia narrates the story, her fear and anger are palpable. Nath's narration reveals a young man suffering his own demons and trying to find where he fits in the world. Both characters want to find the truth behind the shooting. Lori Rader-Day crafts a tense and well-plotted suspense novel with a healthy dose of suspicious characters but her story also explores the psychology of victims, of senseless violence, and the scars (both physical and emotional) that hold us back.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

So first, let me get my bias out of the way, that I am not a big fan of crime novels in general (today's book is being reviewed specifically because the publisher sent me a copy, not because I sought it out on my own), and that things that make me annoyed within this genre are many times things that won't bother a heavy crime fan at all. But that said, even I know that the main thrill of the average crime novel is that it has a more heightened pace than most other types of books, and a storyline where a lot happens in just a short period of time; and that's unfortunately the biggest problem with local author Lori Rader-Day's The Black Hour, is that the simplistic premise carries the story for way too long, the entire first third of the manuscript to be specific, with not really much of a payoff once the plot does start finally rolling along. The tale of a good-looking middle-aged professor of violence and sociology at a small liberal-arts college in the north Chicago suburbs, who gets shot by a random student one day for reasons that no one can figure out, this is basically the one mystery that fuels the entire rest of the book, why he picked her in particular before then turning the gun on himself; and while if the investigation into that question had begun in chapter two, it could've maybe turned into quite an interesting story, that investigation unfortunately doesn't begin until well after the setting and character exposition has been beaten nearly to death, leaving me skimming through entire sections just to see if anything of import ever happens or not. And it does, finally, near the end, in an explanation that left me sort of half-heartedly shrugging my shoulders; but in the meanwhile, what I believe is supposed to be a long middle section of complex character-building simply doesn't work as the author intended, merely because the characters aren't complex enough to support that many pages of text, and their dialogue I found to be guilty of what I call the "Joss Whedon Effect" (in which you can't quite put your finger on what's bothering you so much about the slightly immature, sorta bad-jokey things that the characters are glibly saying to each other, but it annoys the hell out of you nonetheless). Like I said, I suspect that this will be much better received by existing heavy fans of crime novels, which is why it's still getting a so-so score today; but certainly I do not recommend it for a general audience, and I also caution you to keep your expectations low.Out of 10: 7.1

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise and well written.

[vnesting-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written crime novel about a college professor, Amelia Emmet, who was shot by a student who killed himself immediately afterwards. Although she didn't know the student, no one believes that. As Amelia struggles to get her life back, she, her graduate assistant and a local reporter try to figure out why she was shot. A little slow in the middle but otherwise a fine debut from a writer to watch.