Good writing. Fully rounded characters. Love, pathos, and moral horror. Chris Culver’s Those Who Remain is a fascinating and disturbing book. I can’t say I loved it, because it left me troubled. But it’s darn good.

Homer Watson is a sheriff’s detective in St. Louis County, Missouri. He’s a family man, and happy in his life. But there are pressures. One of his small sons is autistic, and doing poorly in school. He and his wife would love to put the boy in a special school, but their salaries just won’t stretch that far.

One day he’s called to the site of a possible suicide. He recognizes the victim. It’s Hailey Bowman, a young woman who killed a policeman a year ago. She claimed he’d tried to rape her and was found not guilty. There are a lot of cops who’d have liked to see her dead.

But Homer’s a straight arrow. When the death proves to be murder, he looks to his fellow cops for suspects. That doesn’t pan out, but he gets a tip that Hailey has been living as the kept girlfriend of her defense lawyer, a man Homer has personal reasons to despise.

And when Homer gets an offer of a good-paying job from someone he cleared as a suspect, and he accepts it for his son’s sake, all his colleagues suspect the worst about him.

But the reader knows from the very beginning that Homer’s on the wrong track. The person really responsible is Pilar Garcia, a loving grandmother. Pilar runs an ostensibly legitimate cleaning business, but her main work force is composed of illegal aliens. She brings these people in and pays them below minimum wage to maximize profits. On the other hand, she makes sure they’re well fed, healthy, and housed, and helps them get established once their indentures are over. She is full of good will, and cares about her family above all things. She cares so much for her family that she’s willing to kill innocent outsiders to protect them – or to keep them in line.

Pilar is a masterfully painted portrait of how even a human’s best natural instincts can lead to appalling evil. I don’t know what the author intended, but one can’t help thinking of the doctrine of Original Sin.

Those Who Remain was well-written, compelling, and horrifying. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to read the next Homer Watson book. But I can recommend this one highly.