{"id":3715,"date":"2020-07-15T05:02:01","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T12:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3715"},"modified":"2020-07-15T05:02:01","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T12:02:01","slug":"hank-phillippi-ryan-the-first-to-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/hank-phillippi-ryan-the-first-to-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Hank Phillippi Ryan: The First to Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Hank Phillippi Ryan was on the cutting edge of the new wave of what I think of as \u201cfem jep\u201d with a psychological edge.\u00a0 Other writers like Gillian Flynn and Sophie Hannah were also early, excellent adopters of this formula.\u00a0 I read many of these books \u2013 they\u2019re a blast \u2013 but I got to thinking recently, what sets one apart from another?\u00a0 Almost all of them have an insanely clever hook, and Ryan is no exception to this particular trope.<\/p>\n

But what really, really draws me into Hank Ryan\u2019s books is her pure empathy for her characters.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s her years of working as a reporter, listening and taking in other people\u2019s stories, but however she comes by this quality in her writing, it\u2019s an extraordinary one, and one that\u2019s often missing from similar fem jep thrillers.\u00a0 It makes you completely invested in her characters and to me, also amps up the suspense, because if you truly care about the people you are reading about, bad things happening to them are that much worse.<\/p>\n

In this novel, Ryan introduces several characters, alternating narrators, but the basic story revolves around Ellie and Meg, two investigative reporters for a new station in Boston, and Nora, who for reasons of her own is working undercover at a pharmaceutical company.\u00a0 All three women are focused on a drug that\u2019s supposed to dramatically increase the possibility of pregnancy with the big downside of sometimes causing complete sterility.<\/p>\n

All of them are unsure of one another, and Ellie and Meg are neighbors, with the chirpy, enthusiastic Meg putting Ellie on edge.\u00a0 Ellie is the most in the know of all the characters \u2013 or is she?\u00a0 This book is a complex puzzle where each piece, i.e. character, intersects with the other characters but the connections aren\u2019t entirely clear until the whip smart end of the novel.<\/p>\n

Another strength of Ryan\u2019s as a writer is that she doesn\u2019t \u201cjust\u201d write thrillers, she writers mystery thrillers.\u00a0 The mystery elements of her books are as strong as the thriller elements.\u00a0 These aren\u2019t just ticking clock stories; they have an emotional resonance to them as well as a puzzle element that keeps you turning pages as fast as you can.<\/p>\n

As the book progresses, it\u2019s almost as though Ryan brings her story and characters into tighter and tighter focus.\u00a0 The ultimate denouement is both surprising and so well laid out you could almost kick yourself for not having seen it coming all along.\u00a0 Because the crisp writing and plotting combine with memorable, sometimes heartbreaking, characters, these are books you don\u2019t quickly forget after you stop reading them.\u00a0 The lesson for this book seems to be: take nothing, and no one, at face value \u2013 or for granted.<\/p>\n

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Hank Phillippi Ryan was on the cutting edge of the new wave of what I think of as \u201cfem jep\u201d with a psychological edge.\u00a0 Other writers like Gillian Flynn and Sophie Hannah were also early, excellent adopters of this formula.\u00a0 I read many of these books \u2013 they\u2019re a blast \u2013 but I got to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[370,194,44,371,13],"class_list":["post-3715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-boston","tag-forge-books","tag-hank-phillippi-ryan","tag-journalists","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3716,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3715\/revisions\/3716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}