She Treads Softly: Everything She Feared

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Everything She Feared

Everything She Feared by Rick Mofina
4/11/23; 448 pages
MIRA

Everything She Feared by Rick Mofina is a highly recommended suspenseful mystery.

Anna Shaw, seventeen, is the babysitter of Katie Harmon, nine. When the two are with a group on a field trip to a Washington State park, Anna falls off the edge of a cliff while taking a selfie. Holding onto a tree, she begs Katie to run to the group they are with and get help. By the time helps arrives, Anna has already fallen to her death. Investigators gather on the scene to gather evidence. While it seems obvious, Detective Kim Pierce is less sure and senses that something else happened here. Pierce is considering that Katie may have pushed Anna. Katie's mother, Sara, also privately fears that something else may have happened but she will never share their connection to her troubling family secret.

This is an extremely well-written mystery. The plot is compelling and full of tension but it is also a slow burn. This slower pace does allow the tension to build, doubts to evolve, and questions to multiply while the investigation unfolds. Adding to the suspense is a journalist, Ryan, who has spent several years searching for a killer who was released from prison.

Sara is a well-developed, fully realized character, as are, really, all the other characters. They all feel like real people with their own concerns and problems. Sara's very real struggle, wondering if evil is inherited or made, nature versus nurture, is an age old question that has been explored many times so her struggle is understandable.

The great fact about a Rick Mofina novel is that in the progress of the narrative his characters are going to examine and experience every aspect of the story while he adds some twists and new revelations all while keeping total control of the plot. Even, as in this case, if the pacing seems slower, you will be entrenched in the novel until all the plot threads are explored, the last final twists shocks you, and then everything is pulled together in a satisfying ending.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of MIRA Books via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.