The Dead Girl in 2A
Carter Wilson
Poisoned Pen Press, July 2019
ISBN 978-1-4926-8603-3
Trade Paperback
This novel is a deep dive into a heavy psychological pool. It is, additionally, a deliberately moving novel with the power, at times, to rock your senses. Jake Buchanan is a freelance writer on his way to Denver under contract to ghostwrite a memoir. On the plane he is seated next to a woman named Clara, who he doesn’t know. Except he begins to believe he does. Just as Clara grows to believe she has known Jake before. But, before when? Both are confused as they hesitantly begin to explore this situation. But after landing, they go their separate ways and the reader is left to wonder how, when and why they will reconnect.
The novel is carefully and precisely written. It insidiously enmeshes the reader in an ever more restrictive web of questions and partial answers as more and more about the central characters is revealed until the story becomes more complex and almost impossible to set aside.
Government research intrudes and parts of the novel become so slow-moving as to be almost tedious. Some elements could profitably have been mentioned but not explored in such detail. Still, even in those parts, the skill of the writer is evident.
Part of the attraction of the novel is the setting, mountain ranges around Aspen, Colorado which is attractively described, even as the growing menace of the increasing circle of characters dominate Clara and Jake and their control over their decisions—their lives—lessens. Mountains loom, questions arise, and readers may be inclined to read faster toward what they hope is a rational explanation. The novel is an interesting and tangled examination of life and fraught decisions we make under the influence of external forces, and all the consequences that derive therefrom.
Reviewed by Carl Brookins, March 2020.
http://www.carlbrookins.com http://agora2.blogspot.com
Traces, Grand Lac, Reunion, Red Sky.
Buried Under Books 