And She Was

Brenna Spector is an established private investigator but a newcomer to crime fiction – and no disappointment. Although her embarrassing gimmick is total recall (and her difficulty in controlling it) her character and relationships are the main attraction. Total recall (technically hyperthymestic syndrome) was triggered in childhood when her big sister entered a strange car and was never seen again.

So, after trauma and bereavement, Brenna grows up, serves an apprenticeship and branches out on her own as a P.I., finding missing people, involved in divorce, adultery and other mundane problems until Carol Wentz comes along, or rather, disappears.

Brenna is in Las Vegas, unfortunately reuniting an errant husband with his devoted wife, when she takes a call from Nelson Wentz whom the police suspect is behind Carol’s disappearance. Brenna agrees to search for her and, returning to New York state, the memory syndrome kicks in. Trawling the Wentz neighbourhood she recognises the town where a child went missing ten years ago. She was involved herself but, as an untried investigator, withdrew when warned off by the local police who were to close the case after making no progress.

Now Brenna is experienced and, aided (but often distracted) by that ambivalent syndrome, she senses connections between the two potential crimes. Some of the police involved in the earlier case are still serving; there are suggestions that Carol Wentz was looking for the lost child by way of the internet. And then her distraught husband, already a suspect where she is concerned, was questioned a decade ago in relation to the little girl. There are other suspects in both cases: a popular soap star appears to be playing a role in real life; not the only one: a number of residents in this affluent community have skeletons in their closets. Brenna is rattling bones and it’s going to cost.

The domestic life of a protagonist is essential in today’s crime novels, and Brenna’s isn’t original: divorced mother, teenage daughter, but this girl comes over fresh, intelligent, volatile, the relationship with her mother as engaging as that between Brenna and her assistant, Trent. Trent is young, vain and, despite fake tan and body piercing, harmless: a total failure with woman but a wizard on the computer.

The story: to do more than mention the missing wife again, the finding of the child, the fate of the suspect husband, would be to betray the ramifications of a plot that is vastly intriguing. Supported by interesting characters and embellished with fine writing this is the debut of an exciting and credible investigator.