Serial killer thriller, far-fetched but gripping
The prophets of this dual vision have mined the territory with
gusto over the years, among them Elmore Leonard,
crime-reporter-turned-novelist Edna Buchanan and the high priest of
Sunshine State-based wackiness, Carl Hiaasen.
So kudos to Lisa Unger for venturing onto such well-trod ground
with a novel that takes an especially dark look at the state's
underbelly. While "Black Out," her third book, doesn't always
work - it's prone, near the end, to some cartoonish resolutions -
it still boasts a largely gripping narrative and evocative,
muscular prose.
"There is a part of Florida that will recover itself when it
gets its chance," Annie Powers, the novel's heroine, observes
early on. "Its wet, murky fingers will reach out and close us into
its fist. This is how I feel about my life."
Annie is a woman with a murky past, the monstrous details of
which emerge slowly, measured out like spent bullet casings
periodically tossed along a dark road.
We know she has a different name now than in this past life. She
has a sweet 4-year-old daughter named, oddly, Victory, and a
supportive husband with a mysterious job in an undefined line of
security work that requires him to disappear for long stretches of
time.
Gradually, painfully, Annie fills in the blanks. She was somehow
involved with a notorious serial killer whose death has been
confirmed to her. Her father abandoned her. Her mother was a
fragile madwoman.
Yet despite Herculean efforts to wall off those terrible
chapters of her life, Annie's past returns to stalk her. Someone
who knows her birth name, Ophelia, is sending mysterious messages.
Someone knows something he shouldn't, that couldn't possibly be
known in the world of the living.
Unger takes on the challenging task of telling Annie's story in
what amounts to double-flashback style. In the present, Annie is
aboard a cargo ship on the open ocean fleeing for her life. This is
where the book starts with its alluring first line, "Today
something interesting happened. I died."
In the first series of flashbacks, Annie is living her pampered,
post-trauma life with her husband and daughter in a huge seaside
house with all the amenities, including housekeeper. In the second
series, she is growing up with her mother, who has dragged her to a
Florida trailer park on what appears to be a lunatic's mission.
Unger skillfully weaves these three narratives back and forth to
create the perfect razor's edge of tension.
The book falters when it's time for Unger to complete the
multipart puzzle she's constructed. She doesn't cut corners so much
as force together interlocking scenarios that are just a bit too
far-fetched.
Sadly, these missteps threaten to overshadow the book's
disturbing core, which is rewarding in a darkly voyeuristic way:
the gruesomely realistic tale of a troubled teen's descent into a
codependent hell on earth.