Dear Alafair Burke: If You Were Here, I'd Say I was Disappointed
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Author: Alafair Burke
Title: If You Were Here Genre: mystery No matter that the face was only visible on the blurry, grainy video for an instant; an instant was all that McKenna Jordan¹ needed to recognize her old friend Susan. No one believed her, though… after all, Susan Hauptman had vanished without a trace ten years ago. McKenna would have liked to forget that time in her life, and not just because of her former roommate’s disappearance. Ten years ago was the exact same time McKenna Wright’s career at the New York City DA’s office was in the process of a very messy, very public implosion. Now reinvented as a print journalist and married for the past five years to one of Susan’s West Point classmates, McKenna’s once more on the cusp of success. But somehow, the possible reappearance of her long-missing friend triggers yet more disasters: her book deal, her career, even her marriage all seem headed the way of that long-unused law degree. And all because a mysterious woman pulled a would-be thief off the subway tracks and then hightailed it for the exit. McKenna Jordan has never been a quitter; and this time she intends to find the truth… If You Were Here marks lawyer/author/famous daughter² Alafair Burke’s eighth novel, including a pair of three-novel series (cop Ellie Hatcher and ADA Samantha Kincaid) set in the Louisiana native’s current home, New York. Burke’s afterword even suggests that some parts of the story are semi-autobiographical, at least some details of the character’s marriage to a West Point graduate. Whether the death of Jordan’s career as an ADA has any basis in real life is left unsaid… Unfortunately, the parallels to Burke’s own life seem to be about the most interesting aspects of this particular novel. Unlike previous characters from pen of this author (including Ellie Hatcher’s first appearance, Dead Connection), McKenna Jordan seems to be a throwback to the women of the “Mad Men” era: a dithering technoboob who depends more on emotion than logic. She’s much more in the mold of Linda Fairstein’s Alex Cooper than Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski; more likely to break a heel at a critical moment in the chase than whack the villain upside the head with a tire iron. More’s the pity. Burke seems to have had a little difficulty spitting out a plot this time. The concept – a woman mysteriously disappears and then reappears in a brief glimpse ten years later – isn’t particularly new, to begin with. More disappointing is the rather lame rationale for Susan Hauptman’s unceremonious departure; not to mention the way in which her life this past decade is compressed into one or two boring sentences. You can give Burke some credit for coming up with a decent plot twist in the revelation of the real villain, but even that raises questions that the plot and the characters’ back stories can’t answer. Perhaps my disappointment with If You Were Here is in part due to my disdain for novels that start with a pair of seemingly unconnected events and somehow manage to connect them through enormous skeins of conspiracy and coincidence. In fact, I am certain that’s why I was disappointed. But no matter what, I was disappointed… ¹ Yes, the main character’s name is indeed an homage to the owner of one of Houston’s premier independent bookstores, Murder by the Book. ² Alafair Burke’s father is a pretty good wordsmith in his own right: James Lee Burke. Say, Ms Burke: did Harlen Coben say you could invoke the name of Hester Crimstein? all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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