CRACKSHELL

In this drama, a Pennsylvania crime novelist complicates her latest work by getting close to the family providing her source material.

Sydney Long rolls into a small Maryland town to write about a recent murder. Bill “Swannee” Swann Jr. shot his mother while she lay in bed—just the kind of true crime that’s inspired Sydney’s last few novels. She cozies up to locals to get details on Swannee, who’s staying mum in prison, and even befriends his brother, Jake, and sister, Maggie Craill. Sydney passes herself off as a writer on a working vacation without telling anyone what her novel in progress is about. This entails a bit of deception as well as some snooping and eavesdropping. But in the process, she’s drawn to compassionate Jake and resilient Maggie. Sydney, having fought through problems in her own past, believes her book could start a “healing journey” for the siblings. But that means telling Jake and Maggie the truth, something that may obliterate the surprising intimacy they’ve gradually developed. Readers won’t immediately warm up to Sydney, who manipulates many people in a largely affable community. She’s nevertheless gleefully complex; her “pure” motives of helping the siblings through tragedy feel contrived, but Sydney seems to genuinely believe them. Her personal life, too, proves more riveting than her novel’s subject matter, as she faces hostility from Jake’s ex-fiancee and deals with a string of vaguely threatening anonymous texts (“Watch your back”). Qnert gives each of the alternating first-person narrations—Sydney’s, Jake’s, and Maggie’s—a distinctive flavor, while pithy writing keeps the engaging story moving at a steady clip. And though the murder itself is hardly the focus, a few mysteries do unravel, from certain individuals’ past abuse to some things Sydney keeps under wraps. This is a dense, character-driven tale that makes the ending both worthwhile and nearly impossible to predict.

An absorbing, multilayered woman headlines this engrossing tale of deceit and vulnerability.