Places That Are Gone by Tom Milani
A superb tale of dashed hopes, lost direction, lust and consequences.
Bennett Wilder is struggling with his nowhere office job and no-show marriage when he spies an attractive hitchhiker, Liz Messina, in the overstuffed Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Before you can say quickie, Liz (last name actually spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E) unknowingly entangles the easygoing Bennett in a boyfriend’s drug deal gone bad.
Bennett and Liz realize they were set up and it appears all downhill from there. But is it?
Short story writer Tom Milani’s debut novel, Places That Are Gone, follows youthful baby boomers in the 1980s while they fail to explore their aimless underachievement (“The company sucks but it’s a paycheck”). They are at the age where they are shifting away from weekends of parties, booze and infidelity, to the dreaded nine-to-five weekdays of emerging middle-class tedium. This is the American dream? Where is Jay Gatsby when you need him?
Stumble Into the World of Drugs and Gangs
At this moment of shattered marital relationships and avoidance of responsible adulthood, they stumble into an unknown world of gangs and drugs and are forced to reveal their true selves to survive. Bennett is a slightly built former high school wrestler whose “easy-going nature and doughy midsection” are often mistaken for weakness. Too many, too soon, learn the consequences of those misjudgments.
Milani’s first novel is told from the viewpoint of Bennett, Liz and Bennett’s best friend Paul. Most novels told from different characters’ points of view simply carry the plot along from one scene to the next. But Milani’s characters add different perspectives to each scene and create heightened layers of understanding and depth not only to the story, but to the desperation and secrets propping up the players now living the moment.
A Tale of Crime, Murder and Innocence Lost
The combination of different points of view and Milani’s exquisite, lean, sometimes lyrical prose, unwinds a revelatory story of crime, murder and innocence lost. Bennett’s, Liz’s and Paul’s suburbanite childhoods don’t give them the tools to extricate themselves from this new world, so they must improvise as they discover what it’s like to play in the criminal big leagues.
Milani’s Places That Are Gone is a superb tale of dashed hopes, lost direction, lust and consequences — which can often be harsh.
Tom Milani’s short fiction has appeared online in Black Cat Weekly and Urban Pigs Press, as well as in several anthologies, most recently Janie’s Got a Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Aerosmith, Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir volume 5, In Too Deep: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Aerosmith, and Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Materialistic Eighties. Derringer finalist “Barracuda Backfire” was published in 2024 as Book 4 of Michael Bracken’s Chop Shop series of novellas. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Authors Guild. Tom lives in Old Town Alexandria with his wife, glass sculptor Alison Sigethy.
Publish Date: 5/13/2025
Genre: Fiction, Thrillers
Author: Tom Milani
Page Count: 222 pages
Publisher: Unnerving
ISBN: 9781997532088