I finished Down River today, and will have to think about it.  It was a good mystery, but sad, and sometimes mean.  It was one of those books you really wanted to end well for everyone, but as life is, someone had to die.  The surprise was who did die.  The lie is a senseless one and one that led from hope to despair.  We see people like that in our lives.  People who are doing so well, are successful, as we define successful, but whose lives are built on a house of cards.  And when the house falls, people look back and don't see the weakness of the past, but the waste of the future.