Norwalk author delivers a tantalizing mystery in new book
The three angles with which to corner an audience’s attention — sex, violence and madness — make for an equilateral plot in Norwalk author Kat Rosenfield’s fourth novel, No One Will Miss Her. The mystery increases as the pages turn in this almosttrue-crime story, with fictional characters fleshed out enough to evoke sympathy, loathing and recognition in people we may know — or know of — in the real world. The connection between imagining and knowing is thematic with both the book and its inspiration, both set in Maine.
“I have a long connection to Maine and Piscataquis County,” Rosenfield tells us. “My dad’s parents lived on the coast, and my mom’s family had a house in Piscataquis County, so I had always wondered what people do there in the middle of Maine, what they do for a living. When I was looking for a beautiful, remote place, I went back to that setting.”
No One Will Miss Her is a departure for Rosenfield, whose previous titles include the young-adult titles Inland and the Edgar-nominated Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone, along with co-authoring New York Times bestseller Alliances: A Trick Of Light
with Marvel comics titan Stan Lee. She’s a witty, prolific culture writer with bylines in Wired, Vulture and Playboy.
Avoiding the “small town girl with big
dreams” trope, the central character of No One Will Miss Her is Lizzie Oullette, a small-town pariah whose life story unfolds as the narrator of chapters interspersed with the plot, a murder at the Airbnb on which she has fixed her modest hopes.
Into the fixed and predetermined life of lakeside Copper Falls arrive the Richards, a
wealthy, beautiful couple who rent Lizzie’s property and present a glamorous counterpoint to the raw scrape of her marriage. The imperious Richards, Instagram-obsessed influencer Adrienne especially, quickly fall into a master/servant relationship with Lizzie and her husband, Dwayne. The couples’ backgrounds — the Oullettes’ dead-end poverty versus the Richards’ suspicious flight from opulence — is left for another out-of-towner, Detective Ian Bird, as well as readers, to parse and untangle.
“There’s this song by The Mountain Goats called ‘No Children’ about this horrible, toxic marriage, and in the chorus he describes himself as drowning with his wife and holding hands as they pull each other down. I had this idea about how you take that concept and build something from it,” Rosenfield says.
“We have these relationships with people we hire to drive cars, rent Airbnbs ... you’re buying the service, but you’re also buying this transactional intimacay. It’s a story about who these couples are, and how they’re perfect for each other in that they’re so imperfect for each other, and how the relationship between the two women worked out as a result.”
The novel is as thrilling as it is curious. Easily definable characters and roles dodge in and out of focus, keeping both readers and Detective Bird guessing to the last page.
Asked about her motivation with the book, Rosenfield says, “I’m more interested in pointing at things than making points. I just wanted to make a story that captivates people and immerses them in a world.”