RUBY FALLS

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.