The simple plot is merely a foundation for intriguing characters who provide the real experience.
In Bingham’s (Love Story, With Murders, 2014, etc.) latest thriller, South Wales DC Fiona Griffiths’ third outing finds her undercover trying to expose a group committing computer fraud and leaving bodies in its wake.
A payroll scam in which a store was unknowingly making payments to nonemployees is a case for the Fraud Squad, not usually for DC Griffiths of Major Crime. But when one of those names turns out to be a woman who’s died of starvation, Fiona is determined to stop those guilty of, if nothing else, what she considers to be manslaughter. Her persistence on the case leads to the discovery of what is irrefutably murder and the ultimate realization that the embezzlement is much bigger, including fraudulent names among numerous companies. Fiona, having successfully passed a rigorous undercover training course, gets a job as a cleaner, then in payroll, both as Fiona Grey. Sure enough, she’s approached by Vic Henderson, representing a nefarious band of thieving crooks. But Fiona, who suffers from a mental illness that renders her emotionless, may be in more danger of losing herself in her new identity. The author’s story is fairly straightforward; it’s primarily a question of who—be it Vic or any of the associates Fiona eventually encounters—is the brains behind the fraud. What makes the novel an exceptional piece of work are its characters, particularly the absorbing protagonist. Even with Fiona’s first-person perspective, readers are given only a glimpse of her mindset. Fiona, for instance, recognizes the feeling of fear, but when she’s threatened by Vic, fear becomes an enhanced sensation that’s more substantial and natural in her Grey persona. Likewise, the dual identities in the story are perpetually oscillating, as a seemingly indecisive Fiona will at different times refer both to herself and Fiona Grey in the third-person—a struggle later augmented when she goes deeper undercover with yet another identity. As fascinating as Fiona is, she’s matched by her villainous counterpart. Vic’s lust for Fiona seems genuine, but he eludes police attention and remains ambiguous, a quality that’s sometimes unnerving. When Fiona asks whether he’s killed someone, he dubiously responds, “Not necessarily me.” Fiona’s narrative sears the pages with indelible assertions: “Deception is so easy, I wonder why it isn’t more common.”
The simple plot is merely a foundation for intriguing characters who provide the real experience.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Sheep Street Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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