An evocative thriller that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
In Royce’s novel, a troubled young woman rushes into marriage, only to learn that her husband isn’t quite the man that he appears to be.
In 1987 Los Angeles, rising soap-opera star Eleanor Russell has just wed the handsome antiques dealer Orlando Montague. They rushed to the altar after a whirlwind six-week romance, and Eleanor hasn’t yet told him everything about her past, including the fact that her father—also an antiques dealer—abandoned her when she was 6 during a tour of a cave at Ruby Falls in Tennessee; the trauma still feels fresh 20 years later. Eleanor and Orlando buy a rose-covered cottage in Hollywood together and she quickly lands the lead role in a remake of the classic film adaptation Rebecca. Along the way, she adopts a feisty cat that wanders onto her property. Then Orlando starts to behave oddly; first, he refuses to let Eleanor’s mother come visit them for Thanksgiving: “You’re all the family and friends I need this year,” he tells his wife. Then Eleanor realizes that he’s been snooping through her desk and suspects that he may be having an affair with their real estate agent. She soon worries she’s being conned, and wonders what else her new spouse might be capable of doing. At the same time, Dottie Robinson, a clairvoyant who lives next door, helps Eleanor delve into the secrets of her father’s disappearance—and specifically, whether he planned the vanishing himself. Can she uncover the truth without losing her grip on reality?
Royce’s prose is taut and propulsive, as when she regrets telling her mother that she’s never been happier in her life: “Why did I say that? I shouldn’t have used that phrase. That is the thing they always say on soap operas before the axe falls—before the cancer diagnosis or hidden twins or un-dead-ex-wives come down from the attic.” The book has a fun premise, and the pages turn easily as Eleanor’s life slowly turns into a mystery worthy of a film—one in which she can’t even be sure of the identities of the people closest to her. That said, the narration inevitably gets a bit unreliable, and the ending, while surprising in its details, isn’t quite as satisfying as it should be, nor is it terribly fresh. The extent to which the reader will be taken in by this story will likely depend on how familiar they are with similar tales in the thriller genre; the works of author Daphne du Maurier and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock loom large over Eleanor’s plight, as does that of Shirley Jackson, the writer of The Haunting of Hill House. Still, many readers will find this journey to be a fun one, as it inhabits a hallucinatory Hollywood where fact and fiction mingle freely and even the smallest acts can feel ominous. Although the book may not fully live up to the works that inspired it, it’s an often enjoyable pastiche with plenty of twists and turns.
An evocative thriller that doesn’t quite stick the landing.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64293-709-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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