Night
Will Find You, by Julia Heaberlin.
Vivvy Bouchet has had a number of disadvantages in her life as she grew
up, not least being the daughter of a Psychic who gives readings true and false
in an effort to support Vivvy and her elder sister Brigid; they sometimes have to leave town in a hurry
– especially when the body of a dead woman is exhumed in their back yard which
their Mum claims to have foreseen: this
event signifies a big increase in income, but removes permanently any privacy
they had growing up. A shift to the Lone
Star State of Texas, proud home of myriad conspiracy theorists and gun-toting
Trumpsters is not the safe haven it could have been, and reaching adulthood for
both girls is something of a triumph – especially as Vivvy has managed to
achieve her childhood goal of becoming a respected scientist – an
astrophysicist, no less, the pride of her small family. There’s just a couple of things wrong with
that rosy picture: Vivvy is
obsessive-compulsive, and she has inherited her mother’s doubtful gift of
second sight.
A very odd combination of a relentlessly factual
scientific mind married to an equally unassailable group of ‘feelings’. For that reason Vivvy works alone on her
exploratory Space studies, supported by a prestigious university grant – until
her brother-in-law Mike, a detective, asks for her psychic help with a group of
photos he wants her to see: could any of
the subjects be still alive? If they are
dead, any vibes as to where their bodies are?
Well. Mike must be
desperate if he is asking for her
help, but he can’t ask his mother-in-law – she has recently died of natural
causes, so Vivvy is the next-best thing.
And she proves her worth: a
three-year old girl who disappeared from her home eleven years ago is not dead,
despite her mother being jailed for her ‘murder’. She’s alive – but where?
Julia Heaberlin has written a marvellous thriller – not
just superior plotting and characters, but her ruthless honesty in depicting
today’s America, that land of endless opportunity bogged down with
misinformation, disinformation, climate deniers, and the podcasters and
newscasters frothing at the mouth to spread more fantasies to people who want
to believe – need to believe – in
something, the more unbelievable, the better.
Through her heroic character Vivvy she lays bare illnesses that infect a
proud country, in the meantime giving us, in the best thriller tradition, shock
after shock as exposes bad guys we never suspected, and a glimpse of a MAGA
world we’d rather not see. SIX STARS.
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