Monday, December 31, 2012

Best Reads of 2012 (19th in a series)

Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton
Please allow me to begin this post with a disclaimer.  I have read very few mysteries, so it is difficult for me to compare this work to others in the mystery genre.  However, I do believe that the term “page-turner” certainly applies to Now You See Me

Now You See Me focuses on a series of particularly brutal murders in London.  As the detectives soon discover, these modern-day murders share many characteristics with the murders committed by Jack the Ripper.  As a reader uninitiated to the theories surrounding the Jack the Ripper murders, I found the fictionalized history lesson to be fascinating.  The story is told primarily through first-person narration by the main character, Lacey Flint.  Lacey is a young detective constable.  Her involvement in the case begins with the first line of the novel: “A dead woman was leaning against my car.”  At first it seems to be a coincidence that a detective discovered the body, but then there seem to be too many coincidences as the investigation continues and subsequent murders occur.  The most disquieting aspect of this novel is not the murders; rather, it is the growing sense that perhaps Lacey is telling us only what she wants us to know.  The reader must depend on Lacey’s version of events, all the while suspecting that Lacey may not be sharing all that she knows.  To add to the intrigue, Lacey’s narrative is occasionally broken by third-person flashbacks to traumatic events that occurred 11 years prior to the murders.  The reader is left to puzzle over how these events relate to the main narrative.

Anna Lyle
Assistant Director for Support Services

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