“A riotous, breathless, winking, strangely feel-good romp.” amy among the serial killers
in the pandemic’s early days, but Lucy’s view from rural safety of the havoc wrought in New York feels superficial and possibly offensive. Strout’s characteristic acuity about complex human relationships returns in a final scene between Lucy and her daughters, but from a writer of such abundant gifts and past accomplishments, this has to be rated a disappointment. Not the kind of deep, resonant fiction we expect from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge.
THE SECOND HUSBAND
White, Kate Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $16.99 paper | June 28, 2022 978-0-06-294-545-7
A woman’s second marriage is thrown into question when the investigation of her first husband’s murder is reopened. Emma Hawke is happily married to Tom, a handsome widower and entrepreneur, when detectives show up at their Connecticut home to tell her they’re reopening the unsolved murder investigation of her first husband, Derrick, who was killed a few months before she met Tom. As more details emerge about what might have happened to Derrick the night he was killed, the police, and even Emma, start to question Tom, who, she quickly discovers, had actually seen her from afar several times at various speaking engagements before they’d officially met. Between a possibly murderous new husband, a villainous former brother-in-law, an overeager lovesick assistant who attempts to lead Emma astray, an embezzlement scheme that begets yet another (unrelated) murder, and yet another attempted murder following that, either Emma is very unlucky or the plot is very much over-the-top. Because the characters are so flat as to feel like clip-art graphics, it’s hard not to go for the second explanation. The dialogue is wooden and unnatural, as if it’s being used to give readers information and not portray actual people talking. Emma is a tedious character, as is Tom, which makes the idea that he might be a murderer hard to buy. And for all the drama, the book moves slowly, with the tension only picking up in the final third. By the time the reader has learned what happened and why, it’s a letdown because it’s so hard to invest in any of the characters. An intriguing premise with a few surprising twists, but it falls flat.
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1 july 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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AMY AMONG THE SERIAL KILLERS
Willett, Jincy St. Martin’s (400 pp.) $27.99 | Aug. 23, 2022 978-1-2502-7514-1
In her third book about novelist and erstwhile workshop teacher Amy Gallup, a (possibly serial!) murder falls into Amy’s lap, and violence, hijinks, and romance ensue. It’s been several years since Amy fought off a killer writer, and she’s enjoying the peace and quiet—living with her dog and “working” every day (even when that just means staring at a blank screen). Her former pupil Carla Karolak is finding success with Inspiration Point, a writing colony of sorts. Then one day Carla finds something unexpected in one of the writing cells: a body. Soon Carla, her co-worker Tiffany, the workshop crew from Amy’s previous class, and Amy herself are awash in bodies, some of which are dismembered, some not. Enter a ridiculously smarmy “Writing Guru” and a gifted children’s author who may or may not be a mystic. The local police will only be so much help, so Carla and Amy, plus Tiffany and former workshop member Chuck, must team up to flush out the murderer and solve the case. The energetic tongue-in-cheek tone creates an interesting complement to—and veil for—the fact that this story is both gory and psychologically intense. When Amy confronts the killer at last, Willett chooses to ascribe the pronoun it to the killer, calling it “a creature” and effectively erasing any sense of humanity while dialing up the creepiness. This decision neatly symbolizes the moral that serial killers do not deserve the fame and notoriety that often help drive their actions; Amy muses that killing for sport renders one “an error of evolution.” The novel effectively refuses to excuse our own voyeuristic tendencies when it comes to serial killers, though—recognizing that it has just provided an elaborate fictional story for entertainment that centers around a brutal serial killer. What a delightfully mind-bending and complicit place to land. A riotous, breathless, winking, strangely feel-good romp.
