I've enjoyed Dimon's work in the past, some of her early books with the Kensington Brava line and her Harlequin Intrigues. The single title romantic suspense novels she's published the last handful of years? Well, those haven't worked as well for me - which I was chalking up to my love of "short" (seriously, Dimon handled herself well within the very tricky Intrigue line...). So I was curious to see how she would work for me dropping romance and going all-out suspense and you know what? I got sucked into this book like whoa!
From the outside looking in, Lila Ridgefield has the perfect life. A former lawyer turned real estate agent, she lives in picturesque Ithaca, New York with her respected high school teacher and field hockey coach husband, Aaron. But nothing is as it appears to be, and it all comes crashing down when Aaron goes missing. Poof! Without a trace. Car, cell phone, wallet, Aaron - all gone. The town is in an uproar - everybody loved Aaron, but Lila? Cool, aloof, never ingratiating herself, always on the outside. Normally the cops would sit back and wait. Aaron and Lila had a fight a few weeks ago. He stayed with his brother for a time, and while he was back home now they were sleeping in separate rooms. He could have just taken off as part of another cooling off period. Except it doesn't play that way to the lead investigator on the case, Ginny Davis. She feels it in her bones that something is off with Lila. There's more to the story than what Lila is telling them and Ginny is tenacious enough (and smart enough) to have Lila very worried. And Lila should be worried. Especially since she has no idea how Aaron could possibly be missing when she left his body in a spot where he'd be easily discovered.
I'm coming to this book two years after the fact (oh Wendy, way to stay on brand) and a number of reviews I've since read take swipes at "predictability." Folks, I've read a lot of suspense in my day. I mean, a lot. And is it predictable? Yes, in hindsight. I probably should have known where it was going from the jump but...I didn't. Why? Because Kane employs a ton of subterfuge. We pretty much learn from the jump that Aaron is not the golden boy everybody in town thinks he is, but the rest of the characters get the onion treatment, with layers slowly getting peeled back as facts and clues are uncovered. When done right this technique never fails to suck me into a story, and I didn't want to come up for air once Ginny starts uncovering Lila's secrets.
It's hard to write a review for this story without spoiling too much, but a few things I think readers should know before going in. First, there's three missing college women, so yeah - there's violence against women. Also, there's grooming - as in Aaron and his female students. As mentioned, I've been reading suspense for a lot of years, but what adds another upsetting layer to these plot elements is that it's a book where there's a dearth of decent male characters. Seriously, there's like one guy who isn't a sack of garbage. And no I'm not telling you which guy it is because that would be a spoiler. Normally this kind of thing bothers me. Just as not all men are awful, not all women are down with the sisterhood. I will say though that this didn't bother me quite as much as it has in other books. Why? No clue. Maybe because I was sucked in unraveling Lila's secrets? Of the mystery of the missing girls? I mean, how does Aaron go missing when he's dead? And have I mentioned how awesome Ginny is? I haven't? Well, she's awesome.
In the end I really enjoyed this story. Was it predictable in hindsight? Sure, I guess? But man oh man, what a hell of a ride getting there. Much like Nalini Singh's foray into suspense a couple years ago, I'm ready to follow Darby Kane off a cliff.
Final Grade = B+
3 comments:
I need to bump this up the tbr! When I saw that Darby Kane was HelenKay Dimon I added this immediately. She had good suspense plots in her rom-suspense, sometimes the balance didn't work for me between the two but the threading always intrigued me.
I often think that "predictable (in hindsight)" means that the author did their job well, so that in a second read one can keep track of all the strings that get pulled together at the end.
That kind of predictable, I'm more than fine with.
Thank you for the review and recommendation.
Whiskey: All my library holds seem to be coming in at once, but the plan is to get through the rest of the Darby Kane books this year - and I really, really need to dig out the Intrigues I haven't read yet.
AL: Yeah, I mean - in hindsight I should have seen it coming but man, it's the ride getting there. Kane does a good job with misdirection and keeping the reader on their toes as she reveals some new nugget of information where you're like "Oooooh!"
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