Novels No. 46 (LL364)

 

Shari Lapena. Not A Happy Family. Doubleday Canada, 2021.

(Not her latest; grabbed as a filler) You can always count on Lapena for domestic drama. We meet, briefly, Sheila and Fred Merton in their upper class mansion in the Hudson Valley. Before you can say snob, they are dead ‒ murdered. Two days before the bodies are discovered, a glimpse of their Easter Sunday family dinner shows Fred's incredible contempt for his three visiting children. He recently sold his prosperous robotics business out from under son Dan without warning, leaving Dan unemployed and wife Lisa worried. Now, he plans to sell the mansion that they all knew daughter Catherine wanted to inherit. Nor does youngest daughter Jenny escape Fred's caustic temper; they've grown up with it, have seen him enjoy his cruelty. Sheila sits by, seemingly helpless. The killings, discovered by housekeeper Irena, bring detectives Reyes and Barr to their doors looking for alibis.

Speaking of inheritance, Fred's unliked sister Audrey joins an uncomfortable gathering of the Merton children. Audrey smugly announces that Fred changed his will to give her half of his considerable estate—a shocker to all, especially financially strapped Dan—only to learn quickly from the lawyer that Fred never executed it. Furious Audrey then stirs the pot to increase police suspicion on one of the family. Each of the three children has lied to the police; they all become suspicious of each other. Dan seems the most likely to break under the stress. Irena, who loves them from childhood, observes passively their intensifying anxieties. But Audrey's friend Ellen Cutter has another bomb to drop on the family.

An ongoing circular switch from one character to another—their fears, their lies, their suspicions—becomes repetitive rather than suspenseful. About two-thirds into the novel, the pace and anticipated twist takes effect, only to fade away in a rather bland finish. Not A Happy Family has the certain Lapena touch but IMO, not one of her better novels.

Bits

▪ Dan says Jenna is out of control, but Catherine knows better. Jenna uses her lifestyle as a means of control. (5)

▪ "Mom's harmless, I guess. Dad's an asshole." (7)

▪ Catherine seems her usual self—such a princess, always, in her pearls, her conventionally handsome husband chewing politely next to her. (22)

▪ No more family dinners. No more asking for money and being told no. No more demeaning digs from his father in front of other people. (61)

▪ Why would she try to hide that she went back over there that night? Why wouldn't she just say so? (89)

▪ "He was going to change his will," she says, her voice rising, all her plans crashing to the ground. (102)

▪ "I don't think he was an easy man to live with. He had a mean streak." (111)

▪ "He's my little brother. We have to protect him." (156)

▪ "I know it was one of you. And I know all your little secrets." (180)

▪ "Even after all the terrible things he did to me, I didn't kill him. And I would never kill my mother." (202)

▪ "They're clever, and selfish, and greedy, and they were fathered by a psychopath. I did my best, but I wouldn't put it past any of them." (210)

▪ She obviously feels she's owed much more for keeping quiet about what Fred did all those years ago. (257)

Louise Doughty. A Bird in Winter. UK: Faber & Faber Limited, 2023.

Still waiting for the books I've ordered, TPL: ya hear me? (Our in-house library is a lifesaver.)

This book goes from zero to sixty in the first few pages, an exciting pace for us the readers and someone nicknamed Bird, real name Heather. Suddenly leaving her work in a big city office tower, Heather is on the run, an eventuality she somehow always expected. What's happening is gradually revealed as she begins to feel safe from pursuit—after sleeping rough, changing disguises, planting her phone and real ID elsewhere. She is was a class of British secret service that monitors their own spy network, digging out any agents who sell confidential intel for money, often to foreign powers. Heather, who's no spring chicken, mostly keeps herself in excellent, healthy shape thanks to her former army training.

But Heather found trouble of her own making. We don't know what it was or who is seriously hunting her, because the story shifts to her background influences where we decelerate into a slower lane—her father's secret service career, her army stint, the segue into intelligence work. Heather has only one great friend, Flavia; otherwise, work occupies her insular life. For a woman so adept at her job, over two decades she mismanaged her personal finances to the point of creating embarrassing debt—making her vulnerable in a sensitive job. Not difficult to predict a big Problem when she discovers a corrupt internal network, but she's oddly apathetic about it until we reach the present day, a contrast into full speed again. More than one source threatens to eliminate her. Much is left unsaid as she struggles with an action plan, not knowing herself where the ultimate power or checkmate lies.

The action of being on the run, is so well done in vivid locations, the danger so compelling—again, contrasting with Heather's usually quiet cerebral life. Is anything resolved? It's a wild ride seeking promises of safety until it all peters out in the end. With a murder charge waiting. Disappointing, questions unanswered. And author Doughty lost me with the name Ruth!

Background

▪ And so I suppose it was always in my blood, running I mean ‒ perhaps not running itself so much as the preparedness to run ‒ the capacity to go through each day always being ready. (20)

▪ All my life, men have underestimated me because I'm small. (39)

▪ "You're no fucking officer," I said, my voice hissing and low, "you're a disgrace to your uniform." (105)

▪ The thing you don't realise about small babies is how dense they are, how hot and heavy, like a tiny nuclear device ‒ so small, and yet they could explode the world. (126)

▪ Spying on spies is hard: they know how to cover their tracks. Once they get wind of the fact that they are being investigated, you've had it. (153)

▪ My mother was a good person and her love was a good love to have, an unobtrusive love. None of us had returned it well enough. (214)

Now

▪ I'm hurtling away from my life. I've done it. I'm gone. (25)

▪ I'm longing to speak to Carmella and find out what happened after I left the meeting, but it wouldn't be safe to call her even if I had a phone. (64)

▪ Then I do a practice run, timing myself on my watch. I can get up the stairs and out of the skylight in three seconds. (66)

▪ Everyone I care for is gone. I've had to run away from all the people I work with, everything I own, and no one in the world knows where I am. (85)

▪ "What are you doing in the boss's office?" she asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the door frame. (199)

▪ As long as I put enough distance between me and him, I will be able to hide. He'll never find me in this pitch-black night. (243)

▪ The fucker used me as bait ‒ but he reckoned without me going on the run. (300)