She Treads Softly: The Son's Secret

Saturday, September 21, 2024

The Son's Secret

The Son's Secret by Daryl Wood Gerber
1/2/24; 256 pages
Severn House

The Son's Secret by Daryl Wood Gerber is a recommended mystery.

Maggie Lawson is a dean at a small private college in New Orleans. Her son Aiden is a college senior at Tulane. When he stops responding to her texts, she is hurt. When he still doesn't respond after his father, Josh, an investigative reporter, is shot and in the hospital, she becomes very concerned. Maggie is sure something is wrong. She talks to Aiden's wife, Celine, it becomes clear that Aiden appears to be missing. Maggie talks to the police but, since Aiden is an adult, she also sets out to investigate on her own.

The good: I did finish reading the novel and was engaged to the end. It was a fine, average novel that created enough interest and suspense to hold my attention. However, there were also several mitigating factors that lowered my enjoyment.

Logically, looking for Aiden is the premise of the novel so Maggie has to be overly concerned to increase the tension and suspense. Realistically, Aiden is a college senior and married young man in the novel so her helicoptering over his whereabouts feels over-the-top from the start. The plot is contingent on an increasing concern over Aiden's whereabouts. When his father is in the hospital and he doesn't respond, well, you realize that this has to be the case or there is no plot.

The plot is predictable. The journey there is interesting and full of various motives, revealing information, and red herrings, but most readers are going to know almost at once what is going on. The details will be a surprise, but not the guilty party.

Honestly, none of the characters are remotely appealing. Maggie was a completely unappealing character. I quickly tired of hearing about what she was wearing, her money problems (especially when she seemed to spend a whole lot eating out, getting drinks, etc.), the leaving work on a whim, and the constant worry about Aiden.

In the end The Son's Secret is an okay, average novel. Thanks to Severn House for providing me with an advance reader's copy via Edelweiss. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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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.