REMOTE

A man with psychic abilities can’t escape the grisly cases affecting his community in DiPego’s thriller.

Fifty-two-year-old Leonard Defore lives in a small Midwestern town and tries to lead a quiet life. When a young man disappears, the mother immediately seeks Leonard out, telling him, “I know about the… ‘remote viewing.’ I read all about that on the internet.” Leonard does indeed possess the inexplicable ability to sometimes see events far away from him, involving people he has never met, and he has helped the police in the past. But he’s reluctant to get involved, especially when the stern (yet also alluring) detective Betha Kane shows up at his door. “So, you had a dream and you called the police,” Betha tells him, trying to sniff out whatever con Leonard might be running. However, after Leonard successfully identifies key details from the disappearance and ends up helping Betha crack the case, she starts warming up to him. (“Oh, you’ll see me,” she tells him coyly. “In your dreams.”) With each chapter, DiPego jumps through time, showing us how Leonard and Betha’s relationship slowly blossoms into a full-fledged romance in between the various cases they take on together. These cases run the gamut of classic, spooky thriller scenarios: a series of stranglings; a disturbed young woman who may be trying to even a score against an elderly woman in town; a missing baby taken by someone confronting dark, deep traumas; random gunfire in a nearby town that may be just country kids playing—or could be something much more sinister. Throughout, the reluctant Leonard tries in vain to stay dreamless, but he’s powerless to resist the pull to help those in need, and he can’t deny the sway Betha holds over him with each new supernatural outing.

DiPego’s writing is immersive and impressive in the way it quickly establishes new stakes and characters. Each chapter functions essentially as a short story as the author deftly guides readers through the disappearances, serial killings, and various subplots that slowly flesh out Leonard’s chilly Midwestern world. (A troubled woman named Paula, in a chapter involving the kidnapping of an infant, stands out in particular for her dark past and disturbing visions of a metaphorical pit.) Betha is a formidable character, delivering some of the book’s best lines. Leonard’s struggle with what his powers mean hints at much deeper themes, like when he admits that he feels he “brings too much darkness” into his own daughter’s home. But the novel’s structure ultimately offers insufficient momentum to fully draw readers in; the series of miniature thrillers never feel connected as a satisfying narrative. Most of Leonard’s relationship with Betha evolves in between the chapters, only offering small asides to hint at what happened, and the rest of Leonard’s life remains a mystery. Without a broader narrative throughline, readers may feel as if they’re viewing Leonard only in fragments, the same way he sees terrible crimes with his strange power.

Great atmospherics and intriguing ideas stretched too thin by an episodic, repetitive structure.