After reading in one genre for a while, I often seek a “palate cleanser” by consciously choosing from another. Since I just finished about 2200 pages of epic anthropological science fiction, I decided to turn to something fast-paced and psychologically thrilling, and checked out two books by
B. A. Paris.

The first was The Breakdown, and the title is definitely a double entendre. Cass is driving home from a last-day-of-the-semester party with her colleagues. It’s “a dark and stormy night,” and she’s in a hurry to get home, so even though her husband, Matthew, has repeatedly pled with her not to use the shortcut through the woods, Cass decides to risk it. She sees another car, pulled into a turnout at the side of the road, with a woman sitting in it. She passes the car, then stops and looks back to see if the woman needs assistance, but the woman neither moves from the car nor signals Cass by honking or flashing her lights. It’s raining so hard (and is in such an isolated, creepy location) that Cass doesn’t want to get out of her own car, but she figures that if the woman’s car had broken down, she would have signaled in some way, so she continues her drive home, planning to call someone for her when she gets there. But something happens to put it out of her mind, and she doesn’t make the call.

Next morning on the news, she learns that the woman was murdered. Cass can’t seem to overcome her guilt, and it’s compounded by the fact that she doesn’t want to tell anyone (including the police), for fear of incurring scorn and blame, or even suspicion. If only she had stopped, if only she had called, the woman might still be alive.

In the following days, Cass grows increasingly distraught, and begins to exhibit signs of her stress by forgetting things—some small, some important. Compounding her distress is the thought that perhaps she is exhibiting the signs of early onset dementia, which is the disease to which she recently lost her mother. Then the house phone starts ringing every morning after her husband has left for work, but there’s nothing but silence on the other end. Cass starts to believe that someone knows she passed the victim’s car the night of the storm. Perhaps they think she saw something she didn’t. Are they watching her? Stalking her? As her memory grows worse and evidence mounts up that there’s definitely a problem, Cass doesn’t know what to do or whom to trust.

The suspense in this book builds nicely. The author knows just when to deal out bits of information about the other people in Cass’s life—her colleague, John, her best friend, Rachel, her husband, Matthew, as well as more peripheral contacts—to send the reader down some right and some wrong tracks in their suspicions about what’s going on. Like any good thriller, there is a twist you don’t quite see coming that puts the entire story on a different footing and begins to solve the mystery while leaving the most shocking bits for last.

I enjoyed this book so much that I decided to go back for more, and picked up Paris’s book Bring Me Back. This one has a before-and-after component to it, beginning with the traumatic night that Finn lost Layla. The two young lovers were driving home late at night from a ski holiday; Finn stopped at a lay-by to use the bathroom, and when he returned to the car, Layla had disappeared. Or at least, that’s how he told the story to the police; there may have been a few details he left out.

The book picks up 12 years later with Finn living with Layla’s sister, Ellen. After a few stagnant years unable to adjust to the loss of Layla, Finn meets Ellen at a memorial service suggested by Tony, the detective who, during the lengthy investigation, has become a friend. Finn and Ellen take mutual comfort from shared grief and a certain sense of familiarity, and begin to spend time getting to know one another. Now they have been living together for nearly a year, and have imminent plans to wed.

Then Tony calls Finn to tell him that an old neighbor of theirs swears he spotted Layla in the street near the cottage where they lived. Finn’s heart leaps, and he realizes that while he loves Ellen, if Layla were actually alive…the possibilities are troubling. While he assumes that the old man who claims he saw her could have made a mistake, he has no explanation for the Russian doll that appears at his and Ellen’s house, an exact replica of one Ellen lost as a child and always believed that Layla had stolen. And what about the leading emails he begins to receive from a stranger?

Finn keeps most of these events and clues from Ellen, hoping to sort things out on his own. If Layla is still alive, though, why hasn’t she just turned up? What could she want? What is the purpose of this game?

This one was more of a mixed bag for me than The Breakdown; a little more predictable in some moments, a little more clichéd. But I have to say that it was a compulsive read, and despite the ridiculous behavior of some of its characters, I continued to want to know what was going to happen until the very end, which is fittingly climactic. It’s definitely a page-turner that would make you a good beach read, if this is your kind of book! Paris knows how to draw a picture of life that is bright and shiny on the surface but dark and murky underneath, and to dole out glimpses of the latter in tantalizing servings.

From what everyone says on Goodreads, Paris’s most interesting book is still to come: Behind Closed Doors is her debut novel and received many votes in Goodreads’ best debut novel and best mystery/thriller categories. All copies are backed up with holds at the library right now (always a good, though frustrating, sign), so I have put it on my list. The author also has a new book expected to be released in January, 2020.