South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Family, law tug at sisters’ bond in ‘Secrets We Share’
Sisters Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott know quite well how childhood shapes the adults we become as Edwin Hill persuasively follows the siblings’ story in his insightful standalone novel “The Secrets We Share.”
When they were children, Natalie and Glenn’s abusive, drunken father, Alan, was murdered in the woods behind their home in suburban Boston. The investigation first centered on their mother, Ruth — “the spouse is always the first suspect” — until it was revealed that their next-door neighbor, Diane Sykes, had been having an affair with Alan. When the police arrive to arrest Diane, she commits suicide.
Although they remain close, Natalie and Glenn took different paths. Natalie is an intelligent but troubled Boston police detective whose drinking problem is close to derailing her career. Glenn is on the cusp of becoming famous. A cookbook based on Glenn’s popular blog “Happy Time,” in which she mixes her baking skills with self-help affirmations, is about to be published.
Natalie “likes to blend in and disappear,” with her plain clothes, while Glenn with her “impossible-to-miss-orange hair,” bright smile and flashy clothes “yearns to be seen.” Their pasts seem to be well-hidden. Yet each is aware that their father’s murder has led to Natalie’s avoidance of relationships while Glenn keeps hidden that her marriage to the charming Jake is crumbling.
Then Glenn’s 12-yearold
daughter, Mavis, finds a body in an abandoned factory — a discovery that boomerangs into two additional murders, embezzlement, betrayal, revenge and secret identities. Their father’s murder can no longer be kept in the past.
Hill expertly melds a tense police procedural with a gripping story about family bonds in the involving plot of “The Secrets We Share.” Hill explores the
choices each sister made as they discover what is more important: the law, which Natalie is sworn to uphold, or family, about which Natalie and Glenn deeply care.
Hill’s skill at creating realistic, multi-layered characters was established in his three award-winning novels about Harvard librarian Hester Thursby, whose side job is tracking down people. While “The Secrets We Share” is a stand-alone novel, Hester makes a vital, and quite welcome, cameo appearance. Hill also uses “The Secrets We Share” to explore another intriguing character in the Hester universe: Boston police lieutenant Angela White, who is Natalie’s boss.
The series about Hester proved Hill to be an author to watch, but the tightly plotted “The Secrets We Share” shows the author’s talents reaching another level.
Oline H. Cogdill can be reached at olinecog@aol. com.