Shari Lapena’s Getting Away with Murder

Shari Lapena’s tenth domestic thriller is due out in late July. My thanks to NetGalley and the book’s publisher for the ARC.

A decade ago, Lapena published her first crime novel after having written two previous literary novels, Things Go Flying and Happiness Economics. The Couple Next Door was a massive success, and it’s a bit of a nod to a tragic case where a family’s young daughter disappeared from their hotel suite while they were eating dinner at a restaurant in the same complex.

In Lapena’s fictional take, a couple are invited to dinner at the next-door neighbours’ home, but they can’t take their infant: their hostess has an aversion to children. The babysitter cancels when it’s too late to find anyone else, so they decide to watch over the sleeping child remotely, with the aid of the baby monitor, and check in on her frequently.

But then she disappears from the house, between check-ins.

Lapena’s subsequent domestic thrillers have also explored the tension between safety and danger in the home.

In last year’s She Didn’t See It Coming, a woman disappears from her swanky condo building without a trace. The police investigation, in both Lapena’s first and ninth books (which are the only two I’ve read until now), unearths secrets and lies.

So based on my sample size of three, I’m going to suggest that her formula, which adheres closely to aspects of domestic noir, takes people who appear privileged and secure and plunges them into peril linked to their nearest and dearest. People get greedy; people are selfish. Sometimes they provoke the violence; sometimes they are unwitting victims.

Getting Away with Murder is in the same vein, albeit with a bit less suspense, because we know from the opening chapters (and from the book blurb) that the protagonists, Jill and Ted, are plotting the murder of a wealthy family member so that they can inherit his millions.

Here the key setting is moneyed Brooklyn Heights. Jill and Ted’s lovingly (and expensively) restored brownstone near the Esplanade is both the visible face of their excellent taste and wealth and the place where they feel most secure.

Ted grew up with money but hasn’t succeeded in multiplying it, which is his older brother’s gift; Jill grew up financially and emotionally insecure, vowing to marry a rich man.

When Ted makes a disastrous investment, they appear to be sliding towards penury. They might lose the house. And that can’t happen.

Compared to the prospect of parting with the brownstone, a little light murder-disguised-as-tragic-accident is no sweat.

What is a challenge is surviving the aftermath of their own perfect murder, because it turns out that strangers and some of their most intimate friends suspect them, and one of these parties is trying to blackmail them.

Lapena keeps up the suspense by constantly ratcheting up the threats towards the couple, but these are thin characterizations. Jill works in a gallery and dreams of owning one; Ted gratefully leaves behind his finance job as soon as he has the tangible prospect of more wealth. And their apparently solid marriage is shaken as they come to distrust one another.

The most interesting character is the Coast Guard investigator who keeps an eye on them even after his boss assigns him to other cases; he’s infuriated that people who already have so much wanted even more.

A handful of others are thrown into the mix. There’s the Russian émigré, their cleaning lady, who has a n’er-do-well adult son; she’s resentful of how hard she works while her dissolute employers can’t even pick up after themselves. And we meet Jill’s best friend since college and her husband, who live nearby but seem to envy and resent Jill’s windfall.

This is not an especially twisty and suspenseful domestic thriller, but Lapena’s pacing is, as always, perfectly on point: the chapters move briskly, and new threats and perils crop up frequently enough to keep the reader satisfied.

And by next year, Getting Away with Murder will be on airport newsstands, alongside Lapena’s other hugely successful thrillers.

Lapena, I’ve neglected to mention, is a Canadian writer with an enormous international readership. The Couple Next Door is apparently in development for TV. But there’s little or no sense of Canada in these books, and that’s a conscious choice made by some mystery writers in this country, especially those writing thrillers. It seems to work.