She Treads Softly: The Fourth Girl

Friday, February 28, 2025

The Fourth Girl

The Fourth Girl by Wendy Corsi Staub
3/1/25; 396 pages
Thomas & Mercer

The Fourth Girl by Wendy Corsi Staub is a highly recommended mystery following four friends.

In Mulberry Bay, New York, Caroline Winterfield, Midge Kennedy, Kelly Barrow, and Talia Shaw are childhood friends. On Prom night in 2000 Caroline walks into the woods and disappears forever. Her disappearance is treated as a drowning. Midge, Kelly, and Talia know what happened and are keeping the secret, but they plan to return to the site where she walked off and meet on the anniversary.

Life intervenes with their plans and the three head in separate directions. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of that night, they plan a reunion and hopefully Caroline will meet them there. Once they meet it becomes clear that someone knows what happened and that another person may have witnessed something.

The plot is follows a familiar trope of friends keeping a secret but it is also entertaining and will hold your attention. The narrative jumps between time periods and characters so readers can understand what happened in the past, the intervening years, and in the present. It is somewhat predictable and the ending is not entirely satisfying.

What stands out in this version of the familiar plot are the well developed characters. Each character is portrayed as a unique individual and they all have distinct voices. As the narrative flips back and forth through time periods it is easy to follow who is who because they are distinguishable.

The Fourth Girl is a good choice for readers who appreciate fully realized characters in their mysteries. Thanks to Thomas & Mercer for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. 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.