Defense attorney Leigh Collier is hired to defend an alleged rapist. Andrew is white, wealthy, and arrogant that he will be set free despite the overwhelming amount of evidence against him. Worst of all, it turns out that he’s linked to Leigh’s past, and that he may have information about a terrible secret that Leigh and her younger sister Callie have worked their entire adult lives to escape.

False Witness is the kind of thriller you wouldn’t want to put down. It’s tightly plotted, with compelling characters, dark secrets, and a truly heinous villain you wish would get what he deserved.

It also features wonderfully complex heroines who exist in a murky, grey zone of morality. Leigh is a tough, ambitious career woman and fiercely protective mother, and, from the surface, appears to have the perfect life. However, we learn that this perfection is hard-won, and part of it was attained due to a horrific act she did as a teenager. Whether or not her actions were justified is matter for discussion, but it definitely shows a dark side within her, that seems to only be waiting to be unleashed.

In contrast, Callie’s life seems to be falling apart. She’s a drug addict with track marks visible on her arms and legs, and she steals drugs from her kind, elderly veterinarian boss, to sell for profit. But then she’s also clearly very kindhearted. She engages in conversation with people living on the street who say nonsensical things, she cares for the animals at the veterinary clinic, and she’s super sweet with her cat Binx. In many ways, Leigh and Callie’s adult lives seem to be two sides of the same coin, and the novel drew me deep into their stories, and made me wish for them both to just be happy.

Unfortunately, their happiness is endangered by Andrew’s court case, and the hints he drops at how much he knows about their pasts. As Leigh examines the evidence against him, she realizes how tough her job will be. All rape is violent, but the one in this book is especially so — when Leigh asks if the victim was unconscious during the rape, her colleague’s response was that they hoped so, given what was done to her. And when Leigh advises Andrew not to take the stand, it’s easy to see why — even on the page, Andrew gives me the creeps. The lead-up to the court case is both thrilling and maddening, and the ending takes a somewhat darker, and sadder, turn than I anticipated. Part of me wishes that the ending had been more rainbows-and-sunshine happily ever after, but mostly, I thought the ending felt right, and gave closure to the various plot threads.

I also think that False Witness may be the first novel I’ve read that actually talks about life during the COVID-19 era. I’ve read a pandemic thriller, Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla, but that was a fictionalized pandemic in a post-COVID world. Most novels I’ve read recently seem to take place in a vague present-day or an alternate reality where the pandemic isn’t a factor, and to be honest, during most of the past year and a half, that was exactly the kind of literary escape I wanted.

But then False Witness begins in the spring of 2021, where Leigh and her estranged husband are at their teenage daughter’s drama production, and everyone’s wearing masks. There are the now-common observations about men who keep their masks dangling on their chins and how they’re probably equally lax about condom use, the somewhat wistful comments about how intermission used to mean going out into the lobby to chat over snacks, and the somewhat throwaway detail about ‘non-compliant’ parents who refused to wear masks being given the option to watch the performance over Zoom. Leigh also makes a wry comment about how the school put on the performance over five Sunday evenings, to give all the parents a chance to attend. It’s a minor joke about how that measure just took away parents’ excuse to get out of having to attend, but it’s also a somewhat sad reminder of how much live theatre and other similar venues have had to adapt during the pandemic.

Perhaps it’s because I’m fortunate enough to be in a country where vaccinations are now easily accessed, but I actually liked these little details about pandemic life. So much of the past year and a half has been about changes to the way we live that it’s almost a comfort to read about how a regular thriller, with all the usual conventions of the genre, can still play out within the restrictions of pandemic life. Slaughter even uses the pandemic to deepen the relationship between the sisters, with Leigh having contracted COVID in 2020, and feeling guilty about infecting her sister to the point that Callie still seems to sometimes have difficulty breathing. It’s both a jarring reminder of how much COVID has impacted people’s lives, and an oddly comforting assurance that real life does continue around and alongside the pandemic.

I don’t think I’ll quite go around looking for stories set in contemporary pandemic times, but, at least for this novel, Slaughter shows how to do it well.

+

Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.

Filled with guilt over the argument they’d had on the night of his brother’s death, Dan is determined to fill the hole left by Patrick’s absence. He helps his sister-in-law Zoe with childcare and chores, drops by his parents’ home more often, and takes over the management of Patrick’s finances and rental properties. Doing so reveals a secret that Patrick’s kept from his loved ones for years, and Dan is torn. How can he best honour his brother’s legacy and care for the family he left behind, while still pursuing his own chance at happiness?

The Promise is a moving, heartwarming story of love, loss, and, most of all, family. Patrick’s secret isn’t all that shocking, and as events unfold, nor is the eventual resolution to Dan’s dilemma. But the ways in which Dan and Zoe work through their grief, and figure out how to move on with their lives, is very relatable. There’s a tendency, when someone dies, to remember only the good stuff about them. But part of moving on means coming to terms with the full complexity of their human-ness, warts and shortcomings and all, and in Dan and Zoe’s journeys, Lucy Diamond explores that part of grief in beautiful, textured, and multilayered ways.

I love how this plays out even in the smallest details. There’s Zoe’s search for a sign from Patrick — a butterfly or a car honking at a particular moment. At one point, even she has to laugh at her own absurdity in wondering if a dog walking by may be that sign. The sign doesn’t appear until the last few pages, but when it does, it’s a gut-punch of a moment, made all the more impactful by the narrative distance with which it was written. More prosaically, there’s a photograph of Patrick and Dan on their parents’ mantle, which Dan has always hated. He and his mother chat about it at a couple of points in the novel, and each chat reveals a new facet in the relationship between the brothers. It’s a lovely demonstration of how we can still learn about our loved ones, and our relationships with them, even after they’re gone.

Patrick’s secret, and the way Dan chooses to deal with it, form the crux of the conflict in the novel, and while some of the events in the fallout are pretty dramatic, Lucy Diamond chooses to handle this part of the narrative in a quiet, almost reflective, way. We feel Dan’s confusion and fear as he tries to deal with the fallout without hurting anyone, and we feel Zoe’s pain as she is forced to come to terms with some uncomfortable truths. The consequences of Patrick’s actions leave long-lasting marks on the lives of several characters, but the way Diamond presents it, we can see how each character deals with the impact on a day-to-day basis. Ultimately, all these characters are just doing the best they can, both for themselves and their loved ones, and Diamond does a good job in taking us deep into their lives.

+

Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The mystery in Death Loves a Messy Desk is pretty good. An office manager hires Charlotte Adams to organize the horrifically messy (think old food and rodent droppings) desk of a co-worker, Barb. Except that on her way to the office, she’s almost run off the road. And when she arrives, she gets sucked into office politics that are even messier than Barb’s desk. Then Barb goes missing, one of the office workers is murdered, and somehow, Charlotte is right smack in the middle of it all.

The big reveal took me completely by surprise — I didn’t suspect that person at all, and I like how the reveal of their identity also peeled back some layers into their true personality. There were also some surprising reveals throughout the story, especially once Charlotte digs deeper into Barb’s background, and I found that the minor twists kept the story engaging.

That being said, as an intro to a series, Messy Desk left me somewhat underwhelmed. Charlotte was a pretty good series lead. I think her job in organizing people’s spaces sounds awesome. I also liked the subplot about training her dogs to be therapy dogs, and I’m only disappointed that plot thread was dropped pretty quickly. But Charlotte also came off as whiny and needy with her friends, which at times turned irritating. For example, she kept interrupting her best friend Margaret’s sexytimes, often to insult Margaret’s choice of lover, or to complain about her friend Jack never being around anymore. At one point, Margaret sets a very understandable boundary and demands that since she’s busy, she can only talk to Charlotte about matters that are actually urgent. In response, Charlotte insists on talking about Jack, and because Margaret is such a good friend, she takes a break from her night with her lover to give Charlotte advice.

Worse was Charlotte’s obsession over why Jack is no longer ever around. I figure there’ll likely be a romance brewing between them at some point in the series, but within this novel at least, her frustration about him not spending time with her just comes off as a clingy / jealous / possessive girlfriend. It becomes even more frustrating because it’s unclear (at least to me as a series newbie) what their relationship actually is, and it’s only near the end where I learn he’s only her landlord and friend who once had a crush on her. At one point, Jack’s actual girlfriend answers his phone and says he’s in the meeting, and Charlotte pretends to have an emergency just to get him to talk to her. The story paints the girlfriend as a villain — all gorgeous and mean girl — and Jack later begs Charlotte for forgiveness for ignoring her. But honestly, it mostly just seemed like Jack had a life outside of Charlotte, and Charlotte wasn’t willing to accept that.

I also really disliked the character of Nick, the detective who investigates the crime. Bumbling detectives are a pretty standard trope in cozy mysteries — which makes sense, as it paves the way for the amateur series lead to solve the mystery themselves — but Nick is so incompetent that it’s a wonder he’s lasted at his job for so long. He acts completely lost during the investigation, asks obvious questions, and repeats questions that have already been answered. Even when Charlotte practically guides him through the answers, he still can’t figure out what happened. I can imagine his character being written as comic relief, but it just came off annoying after a while.

Overall, the mystery wasn’t bad, but the series didn’t quite hook me.

+

Thank you to Beyond the Page Publishing for an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.