Library Limelights 281

 

Sharon Bolton. The Split. Ebook download from TPL. UK: St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, 2020.

Our protagonist first appears to us as an invincible amazon in Antarctica, possibly the most challenging environment in the world. Part One, Felicity Lloyd is a geologist/glaciologist working for British Antarctic Survey (BAS), studying ice formations and their effect on our global environment. Bolton (who also writes as S.J. Bolton) has perfected so well the art of hinting at backstory mysteries that it can become annoying! Parts Two and Three take us to Cambridge before Felicity accepts the Antarctic posting. Felicity has been experiencing chunks of memory loss and thinks she’s being stalked; to qualify medically, a psych assessment is required. Dr Joe Grant undertakes the assessment, feeling that she is hiding much from him. Joe is close to his mom Delilah, a Cambridge detective, currently thwarted by a murder among the homeless population.

Not only does Felicity appear paranoid at times, Dr Joe seems to have his own personal problems, including an inappropriate attraction to his patient. To condense a very intricate story: in Part Four Felicity flies off to the BAS job near the old whaling station of Grytviken, South Georgia Island, before Joe’s assessment is complete. Her expertise with glaciers always calms her. But her inexplicable fear of a stranger called Freddie goes with her. Or was he a stranger? Or an ex-husband she doesn’t remember?! Sure enough, there’s a passenger called Freddie on the final ship of the season arriving at Grytviken. The story is more than intriguing enough for fans of psychological thrillers; the Queen of the genre never disappoints. Despite the chills, you may even find yourself hankering to visit that majestic land down under.

Bits

▪ Managing to stay calm for most of the trip, he’s found his hands trembling uncontrollably as they near South Georgia. (39)

▪ Freddie watches Felicity turn and run to the water’s edge, then vanish into a boat house. (57)

▪ She’d been so sure she’d left the madness behind in Cambridge and yet just the sight of him has brought it all back. (72)

▪ “Ice is everything. Without ice, the planet’s finished. We all die.” (93)

▪ “I’m doing all these things and I can’t remember them happening.” (123)

▪ She says, “Against my better judgement, Joe. That woman is trouble.” (263)

▪ Her head feels like a country she has never visited. (272)

▪ “You’re not a suspect, love,” his mother says. “But she is.” (332)

Harlan Coben. The Match. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Grand Central Publishing/ Hachette, 2022.

The man (later named) Wilde had been abandoned in a forest as a small child; for a few years he survived living alone in a forest, stealing food and clothing, until caught. If you swallow that, you’ll dive right into this thriller. As an adult, even after elite military service, Wilde is slow to trust people. He’s comfortable living off the grid in a portable pod in the same forest. But he had/has friends: David, who died in an auto accident; Laila, David’s widow, whom Wilde loves; their son Matthew, Wilde’s godson; and Hester Crimstein, well-known defence lawyer. Submitting his DNA to a genetic ancestry firm, Wilde finds two matches. Mild curiosity about his biological parents turns into bafflement about his connection to Peter Bennett, a disgraced former reality TV star. Peter met and married his wife Jenn on a popular dating show, then his cheating on Jenn was exposed on live TV. That caused an avalanche of vicious feedback and internet trolling.

Wilde has little time to ponder whether he and Laila have a future; action and events follow swiftly after he meets Peter’s family. Peter is missing; his siblings believe he committed suicide. Wilde had had only a few emails from him, desperate to establish his innocence. Whether their connection is paternal or maternal is still a mystery. But Wilde does manage to meet Daniel Carter whom he believes is his father, a barely responsive man who immediately disappears thereafter with his family. Next, Wilde finds a dead man, a former police chief, who’d been harassing Peter—Hester and Wilde’s foster sister Rola greatly assist with researching and finding these people. Unknown to them, a cabal called Boomerang meets to secretly wreak justice on bullies and internet trolls.

The enigmas and twists keep on coming when an FBI agent is murdered; Hester’s boyfriend Oren—also a retired police chief and the man who rescued Wilde as a child―betrays a confidence; Wilde is severely beaten. Four dead bodies later and biological connections remain up in the air; the DNA interpretation may be a little shaky. But it’s a taut tangle from a bestselling author, even though bearing a slight edge of disbelief about a few of the wilder activities.

Wilde

▪ During his years of clandestine work in both military and then private security with his foster sister Rola, Wilde had made his share of enemies. (83)

▪ “We share a great-grandparent.” (176)

▪ “A producer told you to lie in exchange for a slot on the show?” (303)

▪ How could his birth father possibly fit into what was happening with Peter Bennett? (355)

Boomerang

▪ He’d formed Boomerang in order to help those who were being attacked and couldn’t fight back. He punished not only those who created secrets but those who lied, abused, bullied—and did so anonymously. (215)

Peter

▪ First, they lied to me. Now they’re lying about me. They’re relentless. I can’t fight back anymore. (97)

Others

▪ “Anyway, I slept with eight girls the summer of 1980.” (33)

▪ “Anyway, I’ll get Tony to start working up a genealogical breakdown on Peter Bennett.” (134)

▪ “So we have two babies with no background appearing out of nowhere.” (264)

▪ “Once he found the truth about his family, he didn’t want anything to do with them.” (361)

Calla Henkel. Other People’s Clothes. UK: Sceptre/Hodder & Stoughton, 2021.

Zoe Beech has intense friendships, is easily influenced by important people in her life. And her life is expressed in the artwork of collages. While at art school in New York, her best friend Ivy was murdered in their Florida hometown, an unsolved murder. In 2009, off to an exchange school in Berlin, mourning Ivy, Zoe shares an apartment with Hailey who becomes a good friend. Beatrice Becks is their landlady, whose mother Janet was also present at the rental interview. A crime writer, Beatrice will be living in Vienna for the time being; Janet will be handling their transactions, communicating from her vacation home in northern Germany. It’s a large, lovely apartment with old-fashioned coal stoves in each room. The school schedule is a joke and the two nineteen-year-olds spend most of their time drinking, dancing, and socializing in popular artsy nightclubs. While boyfriends come and go in this indulgent lifestyle, Zoe questions her own sexuality, attracted to an elusive girl called Holiday.

A murder does happen, but not till later. Discussion of the Amanda Knox case surfaces from time to time. Zoe is surprised one day to find Beatrice sitting in their living room—a quick visit to Berlin, apparently. Zoe is soon convinced by several small occurrences that Beatrice is spying on them, reading their emails and Hailey’s diary. It takes time before Hailey is convinced not only about spying but that the two roommates are providing the story, via her diary, for Beatrice’s next book. She goes Hailey-grandiose to thwart Beatrice—never revealing that they are on to her. Their apartment becomes Berlin’s trendiest nightclub every Friday, hosted by guess-who in outlandish costumes (party is the euphemism for an illicit bar). Zoe simply goes along with it; she’s always been more self-confident wearing someone else’s clothes. Hailey seems right off the rails; you just know it’s a trajectory to disaster. Ultimately they both pay a dramatic price. Not your usual detective novel, and with a good dose of black humour. Mainly I found it a lively beginner’s guide to what Gen Z can get up to; my inter-generational gap is showing.

Zoe

▪ I didn’t want to explain that I only felt like myself in Ivy’s clothes. (34)

▪ “You want to open a club in our house? In Beatrice’s house?” (134)

▪ With my limited knowledge of spy movies, I carefully laid a small white thread ripped from my duvet cover over the edge of my laptop so there would be no way to raise the screen without disturbing the string. (172)

▪ We checked our coats, revealing our costumes; I was in a halter-top one-piece covered in tiny fake pearls and Haily was in a shimmery short blue dress with black tights and a New York Yankees baseball cap. (172-3)

▪ And then as if a skip in a record, four large policemen were at the door. (198)

▪ “Hailey, I saw Beatrice. She was out there ‒ looking in,” I said, pointing to the platform. (200)

▪ Whatever had been fun about doing this had entirely evaporated, I was trapped in the looping spider silk of Hailey and Beatrice. (214)

Hailey

▪ “Being an artist is about selling stories, and selling stories is commerce. There is nothing alternative about it.” (37)

▪ “This man thinks he’s some new-age god,” she ripped her grey scarf off, “but really he is just another insecure-small-dick-pathetic-german-male-holocaust-guilt-painter.” (64)

▪ Hailey snorted, “And maybe those fucking Canadians stop safety-pinning their flag onto every bag they own, god forbid they be confused as one of us. I mean, they should be so lucky.” (69)

▪ “Eh ... don’t be paranoid, just because we are going through her stuff doesn’t mean she is going through ours,” Hailey said, near laughing, as I poured her more wine into one of Beatrice’s octagonal glasses. (104)

▪ Hailey did a ridiculous faux strip-dance on the train, her right foot tucked under the yellow metal pole, back arched. A man clapped. An older woman in a potato-shaped coat yelled at us. (172)

▪ “This book Beatrice is writing. It’s based on MY diary. My story. You see that right? It’s MY ART PIECE, and it’s all I have now.” (213)

The “club”

Hailey had developed a child-like habit of decorating on Thursdays, a full day before the parties, tinsel curtains duct-taped above doors and cartoon hearts dangling in our bedrooms before Valentine’s. Helium tanks and fog machines arriving in the afternoon’s flurry, balloons gently bumping above our sleeping heads.

The weekdays between parties were a blur of nachos, planning drink orders, cleaning grime off flat surfaces and answering messages. We were in demand. And so was Berlin. You couldn’t open an American newspaper or magazine without a yuppy-ready report from the nightlife capital of Europe. There was something in the water. Berlin had the post-Wall residue of the 90’s with the hedonistic wells still running deep, but the hotels were plush and the taxi drivers spoke enough English. Hailey was perfectly poised for the moment, she loved PR and her flawless German made her seem integrated. (209)