South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Standard set for serial killer novels
When Joanna Schaffhausen first introduced FBI Special Agent Reed Markham and Boston police officer Ellery Hathaway, the author put serial killer Francis Coben at the center of their origin story. And yet, for four straight novels, the monster remained off stage.
Instead, he was portrayed as a hideous specter, haunting every part of Ellery’s life since he kidnapped her when she was 14 and nailed her into a closet that had once held at least 16 other girls.
It was Reed who cracked the case and rescued her. Ever since, fate kept throwing them together — first as friends, then as colleagues, and finally in an on-again, off-again romance.
Now, in “Last Seen Alive,” Coben finally appears, promising to reveal the burial sites of some of his victims. But he has three conditions. Reed must visit him in prison, the crew of a true-crime TV show must record the meeting, and the agent must bring along the person who had haunted Coben’s dreams.
He wants Ellery, the lone survivor of his reign of terror. Ellery, beset with survivor’s guilt, reluctantly agrees, grimly determined to bring closure to the families of other victims.
So begins a fast-paced, complex tale that includes a Coben copycat killer, a daring prison escape, a race to track Coben down before he can kill again and a brutal takedown of TV shows that glorify serial killers for the sake of ratings.
When the police work is finally completed, the evildoers vanquished and the plot-points resolved, Schaffhausen breaks the unwritten rules for such books by writing another 75 pages. In them, writing with empathy and psychological insight, she reveals how Reed and Ellery at last come to terms with the nightmare they shared through five fine novels and how they plan to live the rest of their lives.
It works not only because it is beautifully crafted but because, unlike nearly all other serial killer books, these novels were never about the killer and his pursuers. They were about Reed and Ellery, and by extension, all victims of this brutal brand of violence.
In doing so, Schaffhausen has set a new standard for how such books can, and perhaps often should, be written. — Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press
The debut novel of former journalist
and short fiction writer Charmaine Wilkerson opens with a one-paragraph prologue called “Then/1965.” A man stands at the water’s edge, “waiting for his daughter’s body to wash ashore.” The next page is titled “Now/2018,” and we meet Byron and Benny, estranged siblings seeing each other for the first time in eight years at their mother’s funeral.
The chapters come fast and furious after that. It takes some getting used to at first, but you eventually settle into a rhythm and enjoy puzzling together what happens between each short snippet. Hundreds of pages of flash fiction fill in those 53 years between Then and Now.
It all adds up to quite a story. Every character has multiple narratives. There’s the face they present to their fellow characters in the novel, then there’s their true back story, which often flips that public face on its head.
The novel truly puts the “omni” in its omniscient narrator, with plot driven mostly by internal dialogue and flashbacks. There’s much more to recommend here, including weighty themes about race, identity and protecting the environment, as well as the power of family recipes to convey love without words, but the fun is in the reading. As Wilkerson writes near the end as Benny and Byron come to terms with their family narrative: They “sit there silently for a moment, thinking of small but profound inheritances. Of how untold stories shape people’s lives, both when they are withheld and when they are revealed.”
“Black Cake” is a satisfying literary meal, heralding the arrival of a new novelist to watch.