Review: The Last Invitation

My glom through Darby Kane's backlist finishes with her most recent release, The Last Invitation. I'm now officially tapped out and have to wait for her next book, which doesn't drop until the end of the year.  Like her previous two books, The Last Invitation was a helluva ride and I gulped it down like a thirsty man lost in the desert.  Unfortunately it didn't leave me with the same feeling of afterglow when I wrapped up the final chapter. 

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Gabby Fielding and her ex-husband, Baines, went through a rather messy divorce, but it's done - well as much as it ever will be. That doesn't mean she doesn't think he's an asshole for summoning her to their former home (now all his) to discuss who will get their daughter, Kennedy, over the winter holidays. She notices something is off right away, for one thing the door is unlocked and security alarm unarmed.  For another?  Baines is lying in a pool of his own blood in his study - dead from an apparent suicide.  At least that's what the cops are telling her and her brother-in-law, Liam.  The fly in the ointment? As much as Gabby wanted to throttle Baines she knows down to her bones that there is no way he'd commit suicide. And once she starts making noise about that?  The real trouble begins. A reporter crawls out of the woodwork blathering on about other powerful, dead men - set up to look like accidents or suicides. It's a conspiracy theory that Gabby doesn't buy into for a minute, until her life gets spectacularly upended.

Jessa Hall is a lawyer at a prestigious DC firm working a particularly messy divorce case with child custody issues.  She's ambitious and vying for partnership, but her latest case goes completely topsy-turvy with the husband making all sorts of accusations that start derailing her life and career.  At her lowest ebb she receives a mysterious invitation to join the work of The Sophie Foundation, an outfit run by her law school mentor. Jessa needs a way out of the mess she's in, the life she has worked so hard for (and by that I mean, the life she's built for herself by being sneaky, taking short-cuts and steamrolling over anyone standing in her way...) is slipping away.  She accepts the invitation, and gets more than she bargained for.

The Foundation is only one thing that connects Jessa and Gabby - they were friends in law school. That is until Gabby realized the type of person Jessa was.  The final nail in the coffin?  Jessa's firm represented Baines in the divorce and Jessa completely screwed Gabby in her drive to get ahead.  Now these two are on a collision course with The Foundation and neither of them is going to come away clean.

After the twisty-turniness of her first two domestic suspense novels, Kane goes straight-up thriller with this book. It's intrigue with a heavy dose of vigilantism - the women behind The Foundation manipulating what they perceive as a flawed justice system to right wrongs perpetrated by men against women.  Even if you understand the means to the end, it's all unraveling at the start of the story when the bodies of innocent bystanders start piling up like cord wood.  How did Baines come to the attention of The Foundation? The divorce was messy, but he wasn't abusing Gabby (and trust me when I say Gabby is no innocent). The reporter that shows up spouting conspiracy theories - what's his story and how did he get involved?  And the most troubling thing of all? Who is involved, how far do The Foundation's tentacles reach, and can Gabby stop the damage before her life is completely shot to hell.

This is a morally ambiguous and ethically messy story featuring characters that aren't easy to "like."  My own loyalties shifted multiple times over the course of the story (early on I liked Jessa - ha ha ha ha!) and for that reason I think this book would make a dynamite book club read.  There's a lot to chew on here and Kane (a lawyer) uses her experience with her former profession to great effect.

So, what's the problem?  Well, the ending.  There really isn't one. There's collateral damage to be sure, but when bodies start hitting the ground I like to know that the people responsible are going to pay the price - and they kinda, sorta do but not to my satisfaction. The Sword of Damocles life that Gabby lives throughout this book isn't really resolved.  Like, to a certain extent, she's going to be looking over her shoulder the rest of her days. A pound of flesh isn't extracted so much as a few ounces. And that's the rub - this lacks finality. A group can justify their "work" as a "means to an end" to achieve justice all they want - it still doesn't necessarily make it right.  I understand crafting an ending with finality is tricky with the story like this one, and again - dynamite recommendation for a book club read - but I like scorched and salted Earth. People are dead, and while some of them were terrible people, I wanted to know someone was going to answer for that - and I'm not convinced that they do.

Yes, I did inhale this story, but I felt a little deflated at the end. 

Final Grade = B-