Why one story totally captures my attention and another doesn’t, I can’t always pinpoint. It’s some ineffable yet powerful characteristic that goes beyond plot, character and setting. For whatever reasons Lori Roy’s new thriller, The Final Episode, kept me spellbound.
She provides a great set-up – a true crime television series is reinvestigating the mysterious disappearance of Francie Farrow, taken from her Florida bedroom 20 years earlier. It happened during a sleepover with 12-year-old Nora Banks, who saw and heard the man who took Francie. She feigned sleep while he threatened to take the girl to the nearby Florida swamp.
Three families’ futures and fates are entangled in this devastating crime. For Francie’s parents, the slow-moving investigation and the lack of information about what happened to their daughter proves more corrosive than the worst possible news, in the long run.
At the time of the kidnapping, Nora’s mother, Lily, is working for the Farrow family, helping Beverley Farrow with the endless cleaning and laundry necessitated by Francie’s severe asthma. The household routine and the constrained life Francie leads make a number of scenarios regarding the kidnapping impossible. The Farrow home soon becomes a pressure cooker, and Lily, her husband and Nora escape to the home where Lily grew up on the fringe of the Big Cypress Swamp, with its venomous snakes, alligators, crocodiles, bears, bobcats and cougars.
There, Nora’s family will find the protagonist of the story – Jennifer Jones, nearly 11. Jenny’s mother died in childbirth, and she’s been raised by a loving father and grandmother, who maintains that all the women in her family have second-sight, and are destined to do something great with their lives. Across the street live the twins Mandy and Tia, who Jenny’s age. Jenny and the twins are inseparable, simultaneously lured by the swamp and obsessed by its terrors.
When Nora arrives on the scene, their triangle of friendship is thrown out of kilter. Every girl in South Florida knows about Francie Farrow – the posters and news coverage are unavoidable. Because Nora knew Francie, her friendship is all the more alluring and destabilising.
The disastrous season trudges on – hot, humid, reeking of swamp smells and plagued by insects. Worse is the maelstrom of accusations, revelations and manipulations that the three families endure. At the end of the summer another kidnapping occurs and everything is changed for them all.
The girls’ explorations and evolving relationships 20 years ago form the backdrop to Jenny’s current situation. She’s trying to make a living and has fallen out of touch with her childhood friends. But now that the television series is airing, the three families are reminded of the heartbreaks of that fateful summer. Poor Beverley Farrow becomes increasingly unhinged and a possible danger to Jenny.
Jenny’s gone back to living in the house at the edge of the oh-so-treacherous swamp where she lived two decades before. Beverley is convinced Jenny knows more than she’s ever told about Francie’s fate, and with the television series lurching towards its final episode, no one knows how it will end. What really happened to Francie, and who will be blamed for it?
We learn that the producers are sharing information with the police, but how all that will shake out is unclear. Jenny has about given up the hope that she will do something great with her life, but you cannot help rooting for her.
Stories about early adolescence can become tedious, as young girls’ preoccupations aren’t that interesting, generally. But here, Lori Roy keeps the girls well plugged into the plot. As they go about conditioning their hair and painting their nails, their actions are not only realistic, but to a purpose that isn’t immediately obvious.
The male characters are well developed too, including the police officers and FBI agents, the fathers of Francie, Jenny and Nora, and the adult Jenny’s sometime-boyfriend, Arlen (who has his secrets too). I particularly enjoyed Jenny’s aging grandmother, Dehlia, who never loses faith in her family, her history and her signs.
Also see Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney, with its excellent teenage protagonist and similar level of creepiness.
Thomas & Mercer
Print/Kindle
£2.49
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
