{"id":5544,"date":"2024-02-02T05:43:39","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T13:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5544"},"modified":"2024-02-02T05:43:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T13:43:39","slug":"hank-phillippi-ryan-one-wrong-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/hank-phillippi-ryan-one-wrong-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Hank Phillippi Ryan: One Wrong Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Perhaps it\u2019s appropriate that one of wordsmith Hank Phillippi Ryan\u2019s 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\u2019s being fired. Even though her boss knows it isn\u2019t true, he\u2019s pleasing a client whose wife thinks Arden was fooling around with him. Arden is heartbroken \u2013 she loves her job \u2013 but her boss offers her a last client with a great reference to follow.\u00a0 Arden agrees \u2013 she needs the reference.<\/p>\n

The client turns out to be Cordelia Bannister, whose husband, recently exonerated of any fault in a tragic New Year\u2019s Eve hit and run accident, still finds her life to be unworkable.\u00a0 She\u2019s shunned by the other moms at her kids\u2019 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.\u00a0 She begs Arden to meet with her husband, Ned, to convince him that he needs their services.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Anyone who has ever used their phone to swipe to the trending threads on twitter will understand immediately why Ned needs Arden.\u00a0 And he agrees.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s lawyer Nyomi. \u00a0Everything that follows is a consequence of the intersection of the characters Ryan has introduced and sketched in in the first few chapters.\u00a0 As twist after twist follows, the reader, in true golden age style, suspects first one person and then another.\u00a0 I veered between two, never quite sure where I was landing.\u00a0 In this, as a reader, I was just like Arden.\u00a0 We see all the revelations through her eyes.<\/p>\n

While Ryan makes Arden\u2019s intelligence and investigation of exactly what\u2019s 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\u2019s looking for.\u00a0 I refuse to give away the many delicious twists in this novel, I\u2019ll just say they come early and often.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 As always, she\u2019s expert in delineating the lives of the upper crust \u2013 this book is set in Boston, her home, and the setting is especially evocative.\u00a0 I honestly wasn\u2019t quite sure who the \u201cbad guy\u201d 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.\u00a0 Like Ryan, one of her best books, Fog of Doubt<\/a>, <\/em>was set in her actual London home and used London\u2019s atmosphere as she skillfully spooled out a story whose culprit is not revealed until the last sentence.<\/p>\n

Bravo to Ryan for using her chosen facility and professional use of words<\/em> 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.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps it\u2019s appropriate that one of wordsmith Hank Phillippi Ryan\u2019s 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\u2019s being fired. Even though her boss knows it isn\u2019t true, he\u2019s pleasing a client whose wife thinks … 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":[370,1559,194,44,1558,1276,670],"class_list":["post-5544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-boston","tag-crisis-management","tag-forge-books","tag-hank-phillippi-ryan","tag-one-wrong-word","tag-robin-agnew","tag-suspense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544","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=5544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5546,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions\/5546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}