Perhaps it’s appropriate that one of wordsmith Hank Phillippi Ryan’s best books revolves around the correct, and powerful, use of words. Her central character, Arden Ward, works for a crisis management firm, and as the book opens, she’s being fired. Even though her boss knows it isn’t true, he’s pleasing a client whose wife thinks Arden was fooling around with him. Arden is heartbroken – she loves her job – but her boss offers her a last client with a great reference to follow. Arden agrees – she needs the reference.
The client turns out to be Cordelia Bannister, whose husband, recently exonerated of any fault in a tragic New Year’s Eve hit and run accident, still finds her life to be unworkable. She’s shunned by the other moms at her kids’ school (and as any parent can tell you, one of the more challenging parts of raising kids is other parents), and her kids are suffering too, as the other kids avoid them. She begs Arden to meet with her husband, Ned, to convince him that he needs their services.
With a neat social media-based scene in a restaurant, Arden does indeed prove her case to Ned, while at the same time illustrating for the reader the point of her job. Anyone who has ever used their phone to swipe to the trending threads on twitter will understand immediately why Ned needs Arden. And he agrees.
Ryan masterfully finishes her set-up as Arden meets with the defeated prosecutor, Monelle, who reluctantly agrees to walk Arden through the crime scene, as well as with Ned’s lawyer Nyomi. Everything that follows is a consequence of the intersection of the characters Ryan has introduced and sketched in in the first few chapters. As twist after twist follows, the reader, in true golden age style, suspects first one person and then another. I veered between two, never quite sure where I was landing. In this, as a reader, I was just like Arden. We see all the revelations through her eyes.
While Ryan makes Arden’s intelligence and investigation of exactly what’s going on very approachable, Arden is very, very smart, knowing when to ask the right questions of the right person and when to manipulate her words to extract the information she’s looking for. I refuse to give away the many delicious twists in this novel, I’ll just say they come early and often.
Like all the best suspense novels, from Harlen Coben to Lee Child to Ruth Ware, this novel is also a cracking good mystery, with Ryan hewing to many of the conventions of the golden age while making them updated and relevant for a contemporary reader. As always, she’s expert in delineating the lives of the upper crust – this book is set in Boston, her home, and the setting is especially evocative. I honestly wasn’t quite sure who the “bad guy” was until very close to the end of the book, which made me think of the golden age master of the twist ending, Christianna Brand. Like Ryan, one of her best books, Fog of Doubt, was set in her actual London home and used London’s atmosphere as she skillfully spooled out a story whose culprit is not revealed until the last sentence.
Bravo to Ryan for using her chosen facility and professional use of words as well as her home city of Boston to paint a suspenseful, masterful tale that will honestly keep you glued to the book until the very last page. — Robin Agnew