If you’re a fan of stories set in an earthly paradise, you might enjoy Douglas Corleone’s new thriller, Falls to Pieces, about a woman and her teenage daughter living off the grid in Hawai`i.
Kati Dawes (her new name) fled from New England with her daughter Zoe (ditto) to the island of Maui two years before the story starts. She fled not only to escape her abusive husband, Jeremy, but also because she had reason to fear she’d be a suspect in the death of her wealthy and tyrannical mother-in-law. The author is coy about whether those fears were, in fact, well-grounded.
Now, all her careful planning and sequestering of their lives is about to go for naught. Kati has agreed to marry an upstanding Hawaiian lawyer, Eddie Akana, and true to form throughout, she’s neglected to share with him the bothersome detail that she’s still married, and has not quite decided whether she even should. That turns out to be one problem she doesn’t have to deal with, because, on an early morning hike, Eddie disappears.
Kati was the last person with him, before they separated on the trail, so falls under suspicion. Despite real concern about Eddie, her reactions are so paranoid – she’s afraid too much probing will reveal her real identity and her legal problems back in Connecticut – that her behaviour arouses even greater suspicion. But then, throughout the book, Kati’s actions and preoccupations seem misguided and murky. She blames her erratic behaviour in part on mental fog. That could be, given the sedatives and bottles of wine she regularly consumes.
Zoe, who would have been a senior in high school if they’d stayed in their home town, deplores her constrained life on the island. She has to be careful about every word she says, every person she meets, and everything she does. The beauty of her surroundings is not enough to get her past the resentment that her life as a ‘normal teenager’ is completely upended. Her mom, though, is convinced Jeremy will be relentless in trying to find them and may even try to kill them. Or one of them. He ignored Zoe when she was a child, but in her early teen years finally took an interest and tried to put a wedge between mother and daughter. Kidnapping Zoe to punish Kati is just the kind of malevolent act Jeremy is likely to try, Kati believes, and he has several thuggish henchmen to help him do it.
Eddie’s law partner Noah offers to help Kati manage her interactions with the Maui police and prosecutor, but his motives prove to be mixed. In fact, both the lawyers have dangerous secrets. After days of searching, Eddie’s body is finally found, and the situation looks worse and worse for Kati. Eddie had a catastrophic fall after a blow to the head. A hiking pole with self-defence capacity is found nearby, and it appears to be hers.
There’s a lot of backstory about Kati’s upbringing with her difficult mother, Kati’s college years and how she met Jeremy, the other men in her life, their awful marriage, and his family. A lot of backstory about one character doesn’t appear until the story’s climactic scene, when it brings the action to a screeching halt. This person should have been more on our radar for many pages.
Perhaps because Kati’s own senses were dimmed by her continued self-medication, my picture of her was also rather dim and confused. She treads the same emotional ground repeatedly, and her roller-coaster emotions and ill-advised approaches for dealing with a rapidly evolving situation are puzzling. It was as if her reactions are in service to the plot rather than the way a person – especially a woman – would actually respond. To me, her responses even her and Zoe’s dialog seem off.
By the end, several loose ends remain unexplained, and a few last-minute revelations that are intended to be shockers actually weave together in fairly conventional ways. Whether this will be a story that appeals to you may rest on how much you value a richly evocative setting.
For Hawai`i, try Valley of Refuge by John Teschner or Retribution by Robert McCaw.
Thomas & Mercer
Print
£6.99
CFL Rating: 3 Stars
