Watching You

by Lisa Jewel
Atria     2019
324 pages     Thriller

One day while I was reading Watching You  by Lisa Jewel, I observed a man drive slowly by our house and then stop and take a picture of the house. I freaked out! I was way involved in Watching You  where everyone is watching or stalking everyone else, and my imagination took over! In fact, it was much more mundane than that--an appraiser, for a refi on our house.

Lisa Jewel does a masterful job of character development and suspense in her creation of a neighborhood full of secrets. Several of the characters take turns leading the plot forward as well as becoming suspects in a murder whose victim is hard to anticipate. The setting is Melville,  a colorful, closeknit, Victorian neighborhood in Briston. Newly married to Alfie, Joey has just arrived iin the community to live with  her brother and his wife, who welcome them into their home. They live a couple of doors down from the Fitzwilliams--Tom, the esteemed principal of the neighborhood high school, Nicola his much younger wife, and Freddy, a voyeur teenaged son, who documents all the neighbors with his photographic binoculars. Jenna and her psychotic mother live nearby. Jenna goes to the school where Fitzwilliams is the principal, but she is enduringly suspicious of the principal.

One of the unique aspects of Watching You is that everyone is a voyeur. Jenna's mother watches everyone because she is sure everyone is out to get her and her daughter. Her Internet conspiricy theorists feed her neuroses and paranoia. Freddy, on the other hand, is trying to chronicle all the events in the lives of the young girls in the neighborhood. The cover illustration of windows is totally appropriate and totally telling.      
                       
The reader is given clues about the victim and the murderer, but the clues are opaque, which causes the suspense to build. We delve into the histories of each of the main characters, but most of the suspicion focuses on Joey, who seems to know something about the murder. Each of the other characters also have their own moments of suspicion, but I was about three-quarters through the book before I put the whole picture together. Great plot development!

Lisa Jewel is the author of several mysteries, so the appearance of Watching You came with great anticipation. It was the first of her mysteries that I had read, but I am eager to read another. Here is her website.

Flawless

by Heather Graham

MIRA     2016

304 pages      Romantic Suspense

How have I missed Heather Graham all these years? I must have read some of them—she has written 150 romantic suspense novels over the past 30 years. 

Graham's newest book, Flawless, is an appropriate book to read during St. Patrick's Day week since much of it takes place in an Irish pub in New York City. Kieran Finnegan is part of the Finnegan family that has owned a pub  in Manhattan for generations. Right now, she and her three brothers run it, although she and two of her brothers have other jobs—Kieran is a criminal psychologist. Everyone comes together to help out on their times off from their other jobs. Kieran's first loyalty is to the pub and her brothers.

Someone is robbing jewelry stores in the diamond district, and it appears that there are connections to Finnegan's Pub. An FBI agent named Craig Frasier is brought in to investigate the robberies and discovers not only the connections with the pub, but he also makes a connection with Kieran. Although he knows that she has something to hide, he falls in love with her—of course. How involved is Kieran and the pub with the robberies?

When I was a young mother, this is the type of book I read all the time—simple romantic mysteries were the perfect antidote to single parenthood. In the last few years, however, since I have had a blog and been in a book club, I have become a much more discerning reader. I told my husband the other day that what I have learned by more careful reading is to distinguish good fiction from bad. And I am sad to admit, Flawless is bad fiction. I knew it was from the outset, and I still read the whole book. Why did I continue reading it, you ask? Not sure, but I do know I went to sleep easily every night. 

Here are a few of my favorite lines: "Of course," she said, wondering why she suddenly felt as awkward as a newborn filly." and "And I know now you'll have to investigate Finnegan's up the wazoo, she said softly." On the other hand, Heather Graham has written over 150 books in 30 years--that is 5 books a year! Somebody must be reading these things. 

A recent article in The Daily Beast bemoaned the demise of the Irish Pub. In New York City, 40 percent of the city's traditional pubs have closed in the last ten years. If Finnegans closes, where will the jewel thieves hang out? How will Kieran and FBI agent Frasier solve their crimes? Stay tuned—Heather Graham probably has the next installment ready for the publisher.

Happy St. Paddy's Day, everyone!

 

Lethal

By Sandra Brown

New York, Grand Central, 2011

472 pages     Fiction

Sandra Brown has written over 60 novels, romances, mysteries, and thrillers. The Denver Post calls Lethal, her latest book “romantic suspense.” They also say that it is a “Hitchcockian thriller that reads like a bullet.” 

Honor Gillette and her young daughter Emily have been living a quiet life in the country near Tambour, Louisiana. Her husband, Eddie, a police officer, was killed in a car accident two years before. Honor and Emily’s lives are shattered when they meet up with Lee Coburn, a deeply undercover FBI agent. Accused of killing 7 people in a warehouse massacre, he is on the run, and Honor and Emily become his unwilling accomplices. Coburn is trying to find “The Bookkeeper” who orchestrated the massacre, and Honor is trying to figure out how to protect the reputation of her husband, whose car accident may not have been accidental. 

Lethal is suspense writing at its very best. The set-up is chilling; the collateral damage is spectacular, and the plot deceptive and clever.  The characters are all believable with Coburn and Honor being the most developed. The tension between them is palpable, but the romance takes a back seat to the pressure of the plot. Just when you think you have something figured out, Brown throws a curve ball or a cliff-hanger, and the reader is left gasping. Nothing is as it seems.

My favorite spot in a mystery or suspense novel is when you can’t stop reading; whether it is 10 in the morning or midnight. I reached that point in Lethal last evening about 11:30. I forced myself to go to sleep only to toss and turn all night. When I got up this morning, I said to my husband that I couldn’t do anything else until I finished this book. Early in my reading this morning, I figured out who the Bookkeeper was, but I still had to wade through several more murders and plot twists until my suspicions are confirmed. AHA, I thought, I knew it all along, but truthfully, I wasn’t sure. Don’t you just love books like that!

I particularly like the character development of Coburn and Honor. Frequently in mysteries or suspense novels, character development gets lost in plot development, and we end up knowing very little about the characters. In Lethal, we actually get to see the characters change and make decisions based on emotional growth rather than the machinations of the plot developer. Kudos to Brown for that.

It is amazing and fun to see the role that cell phones play in the plot. They are crucial to the outcome of the novel. In her blog, Brown mentions the difficulties she had in using cell phones as plot devices—the technology was changing faster than she could write. She says, “. . .just when I think I’ve got it figured out, someone on “CSI” or “Castle” says something about the bad guy’s “burner” and I’ve got to go look that up.  (For you equally untutored, a burner is a disposable phone that can be bought at several outlets, including your local supermarket.  In my store, the display is between produce and paper products.  And, yes, I bought one for “research” — and felt like a drug dealer.)  There was a time when a cell phone couldn’t be tracked unless it was turned on.  Which seems like the good old days, except that it was only about a month ago.  Now, my phone guru tells me that “If I have the phone number, even if the phone is turned off, so long as there’s a battery in it, I can track it, tap into it, and gain total access.”  If he weren’t such a good guy, I’d be very worried.  The point is, the technology is there for your cell phone – your life – to be an open book  (No pun intended.)  It’s scary… And it’s HELL on a fiction writer.” 

It is with some chagrin that I have to mention that it is been a very long time since I have read a Sandra Brown novel…several years as a matter of fact. I used to only read mysteries and suspense novels; there was even a time that I only read English parlor murder mysteries. I had to teach myself to read literary fiction. It was great fun to return to this genre. I have three more mysteries on my “to read” shelf. I will have to force myself to move on to the other genres.

 I want to thank the publicists for sending Lethal to me. I will pass it on to my sister, who loves suspense novels.

 Here is the review in the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/books/ci_18931131

Sandra Brown’s very colorful website:  http://sandrabrown.net/