‘Who is Maud Dixon?’ In this inventive thriller, you’ll be turning the pages to find out
The title of Alexandra Andrews’s debut suspense novel poses the question that bedevils many of its characters: “Who is Maud Dixon?” But the question that will vex the novel’s readers is a different one: “Who do you root for?”
Andrew’s novel is yet another clever example of what’s been dubbed the “Gone Girl on a Train” school of suspense. Two characters find themselves in a jam: One character appears to be the victim, the other the perpetrator. The key word here is “appears.” As the story moves forward, those two main characters keep switching roles until the narrative turns into a cage fight where only one of them will walk out triumphant. We readers switch allegiances with every passing chapter, mentally bellowing warnings and encouragement: “Don’t turn your back!” “Run faster!” And, dupes that we are, most of us take a while to catch on that the entire frenetic spectacle has been rigged from the very beginning. (Not surprisingly, film rights to the novel were sold quickly.)
“Who is Maud Dixon?” is light on character development and plausibility, but rife with the most important ingredient in this strain of suspense fiction: inventiveness. The plot here makes whiplash turns, loop de loops and sudden reversals. It opens in Morocco, swerves to New York and ends up in the cool amoral vacuity familiar to fans of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. What’s not to enjoy?
The apparent innocent thrust into peril at the beginning of the novel is named Florence Darrow, an aspiring writer working as a publishing assistant at the “niche” firm, Forrester Books. (”When Florence interviewed there, a senior editor had told her, ‘We don’t do commercial fiction,’ as if it were a euphemism for child pornography.”) Lonely Florence, who grew up in Nowheresville, Fla., and is now estranged from her single mother, was the kind of high school kid who hugged Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” to her chest like body armor. But she soon wises up to the fact that her bookishness isn’t going to take her far: The New York publishing world favors glossy assistants who graduated from elite schools.
Her prospects nosedive when some spectacularly self-destructive behavior following a hookup at firm’s holiday party costs Florence her job. It’s at that moment, when she’s resigned to giving up on her dreams, that fate intervenes in the form of a phone call from a prominent literary agent searching for an assistant for one of her writers. Florence interviews and then lands what must surely be one of the most coveted gigs for any young person yearning to break into the inner circles of the literati: personal assistant to Maud Dixon.