Published digitally by Amazon Original Stories on July 29, 2021
Patience “Pax” Addison travels quite often to do charity work, leaving behind her husband, a history professor named Jon Talbot. Jon gets a call telling him that Pax died in a car accident. Jon sees a man lurking in the woods during Pax’s funeral. When a police detective wants some additional information from Jon for the accident report, Jon wonders why a detective is filling out accident reports. When Jon learns that Pax’s phone and computer were not recovered at the accident scene, the circumstances of Pax’s death suddenly seem suspicious. He travels to the scene with the detective and finds evidence suggesting that there might have been more to the accident than hitting a deer.
The plot will obviously turn the history professor into a detective — a role that, in Jon’s opinion, history professors play every day. His investigation makes him wonder whether his wife was having an affair and whether her lover might have killed her. The lurking man is apparently following Jon, perhaps with nefarious intent. Jon’s investigation and the death of someone who might have been involved in the accident make the police wonder whether Jon might have killed Pax. An experienced crime fiction reader will suspect that the apparently unconnected drowning of a woman must be related to the plot or it wouldn’t be in the story.
As the reader ponders whether Jon’s theory (or possibly the police detective’s suspicion about Jon) might be true, Jeffery Deaver introduces a plot twist and a bit of action that leads to a surprising resolution of the mystery. Unlike many modern crime novels, the surprise is credible. Not particularly likely, but I can live with unlikely for the sake of a good story. As Deaver often does, he tells a good story here. The happy ending isn’t forced, in part because Jon will never be happy about the death his beloved wife, even if she kept some secrets from him.
The story is short; longer than the usual definition of “short story” but shorter than the usual definition of “novel.” It probably falls on the border between novelette and novella. Since Amazon hasn’t priced it as a novel, length will probably matter only to readers who only want to invest in books that take more time to read.
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