Novels No. 50 (LL368)

 

Linwood Barclay. I Will Ruin You. USA: William Morrow, 2024.

I guess I've forgiven the author for his driverless-car mayhem in Look Both Ways (LL297). At any rate, this is a superior grab from the in-house library during one of those long TPL waits. Topical as always, Barclay swiftly takes us into a serious high school bombing threat. Teacher Richard Boyle manages to keep the dynamite-laden, angry boy from entering the school, calmly talking him down while terrified teachers huddle in the distance—only to see him accidentally trip in the field and blow himself up. Instant trauma for students and staff, but immense gratitude to Richard for averting a far greater disaster. Soon back to normal? Not for Richard Boyle, whose troubles are only beginning.

The dead boy's parents plan to sue Boyle and the school for mishandling the situation: their boy Mark should still be alive, they say. Reasonable or not, they dispute Richard's account of the encounter, and no one else was close enough to overhear. Then a former student, Billy Finster, waylays Richard with blackmail demands, inventing a sexual offence during a school trip. Worried about adding extra stress on wife Bonnie—an elementary school principal—Richard doesn't tell her about the blackmail; they've been quarrelling enough lately. Little does he know that Billy needs the money to pay off some dangerous drug dealers. Well-meaning Richard is sinking his own ship uh, boat, in a series of faux pas almost comic if it weren't for the murder. Billy's wife Lucy, his dimbulb friend Stuart, the drug thugs, high school principal Trent, Bonnie's sister Marta the cop, the fired school janitor, Herb the jealous fellow teacher—all fit somewhere into the crazed puzzle.

Barclay's best touches are evident in his settings (daily hazards of a teacher's life) and spinning twists. Pure entertainment from a master.

Bits

▪ He'd become depressed, by all accounts, and had taken to writing online posts about how the world had screwed him over, how everybody was desperate for him to fail, that perverts and pedophiles were running amok, and one of these days he was going to find a way to settle some scores. (21)

▪ "You can't get every kitten out of every tree," Bonnie liked to tell me. (23)

▪ "I know you told the cops it was all my fault, you motherfucker. Don't think for a minute that I'm going to forget that." (35)

▪ "It's not right, Mr. Boyle making you read something that upsets you." (55)

▪ "Listen to me, and listen real close," I said, trying to keep my voice under control. "I have no idea what you're talking about, and whatever it is you're implying, it did not happen." (70)

▪ Had Marta been made? She should have changed into a pair of jeans. Had she sent off some kind of cop vibe? (115)

▪ Bonnie blinked, looked at me like she wasn't sure she'd heard that right. "Your boat? Our boat?" (120)

▪ Lucy wasn't sure just who these people fronted for, but it wasn't the Girl Scouts. (157-8)

▪ I said, "Fuck you. I'm not paying. Do what you've gotta do, asshole." (167)

▪ ... I knew what was going on with me, the tension I was holding in, how I was replaying in my mind what had happened in Billy Finster's garage. But Bonnie was holding back something, too. (194)

▪ "I hear the townsfolk are gathering their pitchforks and torches for a meeting with you tonight." (216)

Jaclyn Goldis. The Main Character. USA: Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2024.

Another writer writing about writers?! Ginevra Ex introduces herself as a best-selling author of crime fiction, in a baffling teaser scene. Then we launch into (onto?) the Orient Express train, a luxury holiday gift from Ginevra to Rory, who served as a model for the main character in Ginevra's upcoming novel; most recently Rory had been a rising TV news anchor. Ginevra's huge success has been predicated on using a real-life person as her inspiration, a process that involves researching everyone influential in that person's life. Rory is flabbergasted to find fellow passengers on the train are a) her best friend Caroline, b) her beloved brother Max, and c) most surprising, her ex-fiancé Nate—all of whom she'd had recent problems with. Ginevra, for whom money is no object, also gave them draft versions of her latest book in which they all appear, in fictional disguise. As they wonder at Ginevra's beneficence, and start sorting a few relationship troubles, those same books astonishingly disappear simultaneously one afternoon. Only Rory had managed to skim it entirely.

Most troubling for Rory—the narrative switches among the four—is a note for her eyes only from Ginevra. In it, she claims Caroline, who works for Max's biotech company, is embezzling. Max's company Hippoheal is close to producing a drug that will reduce or reverse the affects of Alzheimer's—a disease suffered by his and Rory's beloved papa Anselm. What secrets have been hidden from Rory? Has Ginevra included them in the book? Who stole their draft manuscripts? Why? Is someone murdered in the book? Ginevra's lawyer Gabriele is minding them on their Italian coast journey; her twin sister Orsola hovers in the wings.

In her new book, we wonder if, at last, Ginevra has inserted herself into the story. Adoption, twins, Russian Jews, corporate malfeasance, all in the mix. It's an intricate, multi-layered plot guaranteed to engage the reader from the get-go.

Bits

▪ Caro's not the most intoxicating, maybe, not a conventional star—but in her quiet, unassuming way, in her kindness, her softness, she shines like the sun, and you find yourself wanting to launch into her orbit. (12)

▪ He's the love of her life, though. Rory will take Nate back now, won't she? (15)

▪ No matter that I've become a respected biotech CEO, you are always, in some part, that little kid version of yourself. (36-7)

▪ "Crystal clear from what Ginevra showed me that Papa isn't my father, not genetically. And the woman I've always thought of as Mom was apparently never mine." (72)

▪ So I'm the villain? Then maybe Ginevra knows. Both things. Both my dirty secrets. (97)

▪ "But you're inventing things that aren't real. I don't have the books." (132)

▪ "I thought you had much more integrity than this. You really should be the one to tell Max first." (169)

▪ It's all changed. ... It's all spiraling out of control ... . (207)

▪ I need my brother—my lifeline on this strange, twisted trip. (209)

▪ "Max, wake up! You have to face it! Make things right. Enough already!" (260)

Ginevra

▪ "She's planned it all. The best of the best. She wants this to be the trip of a lifetime. The most perfect trip of all of your lives." (23)

▪ For each book, she uses a new real-life person as her main character. She then mines that main character for handsome reward, delving into the most minute corners of their past, using their genuine tics and traumas to craft an otherwise fictional tale. (25)

▪ "She's really a puppeteer, isn't she?" Nate shakes his head. (27)

▪ It was Ginevra's well-due punishment to stay and care for Orsola, provide for her. To stay and try to make it up to her. (79)

▪ Ginevra was acutely aware of the pressure, on her and on Rory, to turn out a memorable main character. Absolutely everything was pinned upon it. (81)

▪ "That's insane," Nate said. "There's no way the author is that diabolical. Rory could have died." (96)

▪ All roads lead back to fucking Ginevra Ex. Spinning out, speculating whether she knew. Whether she put it in the book—and how much. (161)

▪ "But I think I really came to the synagogue to meet you." (225)