The plot thickens, thickens and thickens

A Good Family will keep you guessing with its countless twists and turns

A Good Family A.H. Kim Graydon House

Never once in the history of domestic suspense tales — from James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce to Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies — has a fictional family turned out to be as “good” as it first appears. So savvy readers know from the get-go that the title of A.H. Kim’s debut thriller, A Good Family, must be ironic.

The Min-Lindstroms may look close to perfect: like the faux families in those Old Navy and Cheerios ads, they’re good-looking, well-off and multiracial (specifically, Korean and Swedish). Yet they’re too good to be true.

A Good Family opens and closes at the Min-Lindstrom family reunion at Le Refuge, a vacation house on the Chesapeake Bay. Le Refuge belongs to Beth Lindstrom, a pharmaceutical company executive who generates the big bucks, and Sam Min, a country club golf coach who doesn’t. Their two daughters are part of the scrum of cousins housed in a luxury outbuilding on the property. Also at the reunion are Beth’s older sister and brother (along with their spouses) and Sam’s older sister, Hannah, who, at 49, is the only unmarried adult and the oldest person there.

Hannah and Beth take turns narrating the story, which tipsily loop de loops like a mosquito that’s buzzed through a pitcher of frozen margaritas. Plot is paramount in A Good Family. Readers should be forewarned that Kim isn’t concerned with psychological depth, literary style or atmosphere. Instead, the fun derives from allowing oneself to be tirelessly sucker-punched by plot revelations.

For instance, the first chapter ends with a zinger when Hannah spies her brother Sam having sex with his sister-in-law, Eva, in an upstairs bedroom. Soon after, we learn that this year’s reunion is a sendoff for Beth, who’s due to report to Alderson federal prison camp in West Virginia. Beth has been sentenced to almost 10 years for insider trading, as well as for the fraudulent marketing of a Ritalin-type drug that turned out to dangerously curb young patients’ appetites.

Rare in a suspense novel, Kim often makes events turn out better than we anticipate. For instance, we might expect that Beth will be walking into an Orange Is the New Black nightmare of hazing and degradation. Prison, however, turns out to be pleasant.

Beth tells Hannah at visiting hours that: “You’d be amazed how much less stress you feel when you don’t have to worry about taking care of two young children, holding down a full-time job, and fighting off creditors ...”

The mystery at the centre of A Good Family is the identity of the person who dropped the dime on Beth and her shady pharmaceutical practices. During their first prison visit together, Beth begs Hannah to ferret out the identity of the snitch.

You’ll never guess; or maybe you will. No matter. A Good Family is a lively suspense diversion that provides the welcome assurance that nobody has it all, at least not forever.

The Washington Post