CLAIRE CONSIDERS

CLAIRE CONSIDERS

THROUGH ANY WINDOW by Deb Richardson-Moore

Readers, I invite you to dive right into Deb Richardson-Moore’s new book, “Through Any Window” (Red Adept Publishing 2024)—but be sure to set aside a couple of days of uninterrupted time because you will not want to put this wickedly clever mystery/thriller down until you’ve turned the last page. What makes “Through Any Window” so compulsively readable? It’s not just the “who done it?” and “what happens next?” attributes of this engaging, character-driven, and intriguing novel that will keep you focused, but also the way the author quickly whisks readers into the turbulent world of her characters. This book is a stellar example of mystery fiction at its sharpest.

The author does not dally around but jumps right into a double murder on the first few pages, but murders with a witness who does not quite understand what she saw—or thought she saw. Protagonist Riley Masterson, a young college drop-out woman on a kind of lam from her own life, wakes in a bedroom in her cousin’s pool house. She is supposed to be at work, but left early, so no one would expect her to be in the pool house. She hears a noise and “slipped from the bed that wasn’t hers, clutching a light-weight comforter as a shield.”

Atmospherically drawn, these opening scenes set a tone and lift the suspense right off the page. “Outside, storm clouds blackened the sky, but pool lights gleamed through the glass doors and illuminated two people on the sofa, half-dressed, entwined.” Yet the couple and Riley are not the only ones in the pool house. In the kitchen doorway, twenty feet away, another figure stands watching. To Riley’s horror, that person slowly raises an arm and points a gun. Before Riley can scream a warning, a shot rings out. In the first of many twists, however, the shot does not come from the figure in the kitchen. No, the noise of the gunfire comes from a different direction. Riley closes her eyes and rocks and rocks, thinking this couldn’t be happening again.

Couldn’t be happening again?

Riley, as readers will soon learn, was the lead suspect in a still unsolved murder of her older, married lover back in Mobile, Alabama. She was hounded by the police, which accounts for why she is living in her cousin’s pool house in South Carolina and waiting tables in a trendy bar and restaurant. Riley, a striking brunette, mocha-eyed wild child, is also a wee bit of an alcoholic, and so what she sees and hears and relates is sometimes a tad suspect. It might be accurate. Or not. The alcoholic blur is both character revealing and an essential element of the plot and provides a glint of an unreliable narrator.

The cast of characters, headed intriguingly by Riley, is diverse, with even the minor characters well drawn and carrying their weight. This motley band includes Cousin Mikala and her cheating, handsome banker husband. Mikala has body weight issues, social ambitions, and an outrageous, devious plan. Neighbors include a married same-sex couple, Cate and Savannah, and their adopted mix-raced teenage son. Watch for the heartwarming twist regarding the son, by the way. Savannah is the more dynamic of this couple, a gorgeous real estate developer who is so busy low-balling sales and ripping up older mill town houses to replace with mansions for the wealthy that she fails to see how destructive her greed is. However, her wife Cate—a gentle gardener—and the adopted son not only see this impact but they recoil from it.

Continuing the lively cast, Riley’s wilder sister, Rayanne, adds yet another puzzle, along with menacing vibes. The novel only slowly unravels the dark secret between the sisters, and this slow reveal keeps the suspense up as readers know something ominous is afoot but not quite what. To Riley’s dismay, Rayanne descends out of the past, promising to stay in the pool house for only one night, but then ends up living in the main house with Cousin Mikala and her husband with no exit date in sight. This leads to another plot twist in which Rayanne’s malicious and manipulative scheme explodes headfirst into Mikala’s own devious plan.

Perhaps the most likable character in the novel is Caleb, a homeless busboy barely out of his teens who works at the restaurant with Riley. Caleb is the son of a self-centered addict and is trying hard to escape the pull of both his mother and her dead ended way of life. He is also a person accustomed to being overlooked, which allows him to observe things others miss. Odds are against this man, who sleeps at night as a trespasser in neighbor Cate’s potting shed, which, not incidentally, provides him a clear view into the pool house from the window in the shed. He and Riley become unlikely friends, but this will be tested. Given his history, including past run-ins with the law, he is the perfect suspect in the double murder in the pool house.

The two police detectives who attempt to solve that double murder soon happen upon Riley’s own past as a suspect in the unsolved Mobile murder. When a Mobile detective lights into town, he might be convincing the local cops that Riley makes a better suspect than Caleb. The colliding investigations into the Mobile murder and the double pool house murders give the book an engaging police procedural gloss too.

But wait, there are yet a handful of twists in this crafty, impeccably organized, and well paced novel of suspense. There’s a rapist on the loose, a meth-head blackmailer, more conniving folks with hidden agendas, a dilapidated rooming house full of the recent homeless, rich people mad at the poor people and vice-versa, and a whole community angry at Savannah for misleading them. Some characters are not exactly who or what they first seem to be. Keep your eyes open for the delicious hints sprinkled throughout before all the loose ends come together in a truly surprising finish with multiple twists.

Additionally, a social message is woven into the plot with a theme that gentle gardener Cate captures when she says: “But it does matter how we make our living, how we live in the world.” Author Deb Richardson-Moore knows how to impart her theme and social message into the novel without being shrill, strident, or intrusive. As an author myself I appreciate the delicate hand with which Richardson-Moore infused her message about the downside of gentrification into the novel. I know how hard it is to convey a social theme like that without becoming overtly moralizing or sounding like a lecture. Yet she conveys the message clearly through her characters and plot while illustrating how gentrification of older, less wealthy neighborhoods creates homelessness and poverty among those priced out of their homes and displaced. Rest assured, however, the social consciousness does not hinder this compelling and endlessly mysterious novel, but only enhances the story.

All in all, this is a grand and inviting mystery, with more than a hint of stalker/thriller, unreliable narrator, and police procedural rolled into the package. In other words, a novel with pretty much something for all readers. Bravo, Deb Richardson-Moore, for such a fine book.

Author Richardson-Moore, a former national award-winning reporter for The Greenville News, lives in South Carolina with her husband, where she enjoys gardening, volunteering, and public speaking. She is the author of five mystery/suspense titles and a memoir, "The Weight of Mercy," about her early years as a pastor among the homeless at the Triune Mercy Center in Greenville, S.C. Her books have been finalists in Killer Nashville competitions.