The House of Secrets by Brad Meltzer and Tod Goldberg

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 7, 2016

Hazel Nash grew up with a famous father who had a television show -- The House of Secrets -- that appealed to the gullible, particularly those who believe in Sasquatch and implausible conspiracies. Her brother, Skip, was also on the show and is also famous. Hazel is not famous. At the age of 35, she is an anthropology professor who studies death rituals. She manages to escape her own death in an accident that scrambles her brain. Hazel now finds herself at the center of her own conspiracy, one that involves a dead man who had a bible sewn into his chest.

Hazel’s accident has caused her to lose her emotional memories, her attachments to people and things. She doesn’t recognize or remember having relationships with the people in her past. At the same time, she doesn’t remember the kind of person she used to be -- perhaps for the better, since she might have been something of a sociopath before the accident. She doesn’t remember all the details of her old life, but she remembers how to be dangerously violent.

Someone called The Bear has taken an interest in Hazel and Skip. So has an FBI agent named Trevor Rabkin, who thinks Hazel’s father was up to no good. All of this ties in to people who are turning up dead in foreign countries while wearing Revolutionary War uniforms (American side). It also turns into a search for Benedict Arnold’s bible -- something that Hazel’s father spent the clandestine part of his career trying to find. Why? You need to read the book to find out. No spoilers here.

I’m not fond of the contrived “lost memory” device, which writers use as a convenient way to conceal important facts from the reader in the hope of building suspense. Unfortunately, The House of Secrets isn’t very suspenseful. Hazel and Skip are reasonably sympathetic but not fully rounded. The House of Secrets certainly isn’t a character-driven novel, so the question is whether the plot makes it worth reading.

At best, I would answer that question with a qualified maybe. The story holds a few surprises, including the nature of Benedict Arnold’s bible, but it is needlessly convoluted. Occasional action scenes keep the story lurching forward but when she isn’t fighting or fleeing, Hazel engages in a lot of hand-wringing and pointless speculating. Information dumps at the end finally explain the plot, but I’m not sure they are worth waiting for. This could have been a much tighter novel, and by the time the truth about the bibles is revealed, it isanti-climactic and a little too goofy.

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