Someone We Know – Shari Lapena, Viking 2019 and I borrowed my copy from the library. A perfect place to try new authors.
This isn’t a whodunit mystery in a traditional sense, there simply aren’t enough clues for us to reasonably follow but it’s a solid character driven mystery much like her novel The Couple Next Door… but where that story focused on the police procedure and plot driven, this is more like an Unwanted Guest in that the story is strongly driven be well written and multilayered characters both suspects and those who suspect them alike. Shari… she spends a lot of time showing means motive and opportunity to several characters in this story, each set of particulars turning and twisting but not all the pieces fit together for any of them. Sure the circumstantial evidence is there for each on spades, but when it comes down to it, is the killer someone we know?
The story starts right off with Raleigh committing a break in and roaming about a neighbor’s house. Seems this is his idea of kicks. Meanwhile a neighbor Robert has reported his wife Amanda missing. Seems the flirtatious young wife he’s simply disappeared. That is until a chance encounter in a lake not far from town reveals her body in the trunk. As detectives Webb and Moen start making inquiries they begin to find no lack of suspect and no lack of motives in what appears to be an insular close knit community of neighbors. Meanwhile, the questions the investigation spawn lead friends and neighbors through a series of revelations uncovering the secrets that unexpectedly bind them together.
“Parenting is so stressful, she thinks, glancing sidelong at her moody son slouched in the seat beside her. You try to do your best, But really what control do you have over them once they’re not little anymore? You have no idea what’s going on inside their heads, or what they’re up to. What if she’d never seen that text? How long would it have gone on – until he was arrested and the cops showed up at the house? He was breaking into places, snooping through people’s lives, and they’d known nothing about it. If anyone has accused her son of such a thing, she would never believe it. That’s how little she knows him these days. But she saw those texts herself. He admitted it. She wonders uneasily if he’s keeping any other secrets. She parks the car in their driveway and says, “Raleigh, is there anything else you want to tell me?”