Just Finished Reading: Sunburn by Laura Lippman (FP: 2018) [290pp] 

Belleville, Delaware. It was, he said repeatedly, all part of the job. They said to get close to her, to befriend her, to get her secrets. That was his job, to investigate, to search, to get close. He was actually surprised, shocked even, when he started to like her. She was tough, funny, clever and not too shabby looking. Sure, you could tell that she was more than a little private about her life, but he knew she wouldn’t just tell him her real-life story not even when they started dating. Part of the act was trying to be surprised by what she did let slip and not to ask too many leading questions. He knew far more about her than she knew he did – the fact that she had killed her first husband, that she’d served time in prison and that she’d abandoned a second child just weeks previously. She was bad to the bone, wasn’t she? So why did he like her so much? It wasn’t just sexual attraction that was for sure. It wasn’t like he had any problems getting dates when he wasn’t on the job, he was a good-looking guy – so he’d been told. So, why didn’t he believe she was as bad as her file seemed to say she was? Was he being lied to? Was the guy who hired him on the level? Was he really trying to recover money for an insurance company? After a few months of this he was second guessing everything he supposedly knew about her – but what if he was wrong? DEAD wrong....? 

I’ve been picked up modern/contemporary thrillers/crime novels for a while now – a LONG while – and I thought I should really start reading them. So, here we are! I didn’t know quite what to expect with this one, never having read the author before, but I was honestly rather impressed. But as this is her (I think!) 22nd published novel I imagine that she’s got her stuff together by now! I did find the start a little slow and a little confusing, but once I got more into it, I did find it to be a quite delicious, complex, layered novel. There was a certain element of suspense, but there was more than that. Mostly we stayed inside the heads of the object of the investigation (Polly) and the man sent to find out her secrets (Adam), but we do get insights into her earlier life through flashbacks and conversations which added nicely to the balancing act I was forced to take to decide if she was ‘bad’ or not. Polly in particular was an interesting, flawed but real character with a very challenging (to say the least) background story that some – particularly female – readers might struggle with. There are several scenes/memories of domestic abuse that made me cringe more than a little, so BEWARE. This is most certainly not a novel filled with puppies and rainbows. However, it is very well written and most certainly worth the emotional effort to read.  

Being the person I am, and having the amount of unread books I do, I’m not sure if I have any more of this authors novels already purchased. But if I do, and if I come across one/some of them whilst reshuffling my stacks (as I periodically do), I’ll be sure to schedule them into my future reading regime. Recommended if you have a fairly robust emotional outlook on life.