Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
“We didn’t call the police right away.”
This is no ordinary family. Four of its members are brilliant and fluent, one is mute. Mom is Korean, Dad white; John and Mia are 20-year-old twins; Eugene is 14, as an infant diagnosed with autism and Angelman syndrome. Mia tells their story – with meticulous footnotes – emphasising that, despite his inability to speak, her brother can communicate on the simplest level: body language. He’s affectionate and much loved - but he’s big and powerful, unpredictable and terribly vulnerable. He’s never allowed out on his own.
It is catastrophic then that one summer’s afternoon he should come barging home alone, distraught and bloody, unable to communicate, to utter one word of what has happened and, crucially, the current condition or whereabouts of his father.
The family lives in an affluent suburb of Washington DC within easy reach of a reserve on the banks of the Potomac River: a small wilderness with trails and a viewpoint above a 100-foot waterfall. It transpires that walkers have seen Eugene and Dad there today and a motorist nearly ran Eugene down as he blundered home but no one can say why or how he left his father.
The park is searched using helicopters and dogs but, with no trace found, after several days the authorities are convinced that Adam Parson (Dad) isn’t here, neither injured nor dead. A female cop called Morgan Jason is assigned to the family, apparently acting as a liaison officer while looking for a motive behind Dad’s disappearance - insurance scam? Extramarital affair? - but Mia senses Jason’s hidden agenda. This woman is targeting her little brother and the word “manslaughter” creeps into her interminable exchanges with the twins and Mom and the watching and ever-watchful Eugene,
On one level Happiness Falls may be read as a crime novel with clue after clue carefully introduced until a turning point is reached and the pace quickens, revealing yet more mystery. The turning point here is Dad’s wallet. Recovered from the river, it leads Mia to his passwords, his computer, and ultimately to his other life. The plot is clever, complicated, the depiction so enthralling that when, after hours of absorption the reader is freed from the travails of this beleaguered family, she draws breath only to be blasted by the message.
For here be monsters. Chasing happiness Society (Mia’s idiots?) are unaware of others, like themselves but different in some way, any way, and
epitomised by Eugene, an intelligent teen-ager trapped in his own skin.
Angie Kim’s flawless writing, her style, perceptiveness, above all, her sincerity, have produced a gem.
