The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre

Published in the UK in 2022; published by Penzler Publishing/Scarlet on November 7, 2023

Jen Dunne’s first husband (a bent cop named Jason) has been gone for ten years, presumed dead for the last three. Jen isn’t sure she trusts her soon-to-be-second husband, Zaki Hussain, but after the first one she’s not sure she trusts any man.

Jen has a pre-wedding hen weekend on a private island in Scotland with a group of friends and Zaki’s sister Samira, who is happy to get away from her newborn twins. Of the other hens, Michelle Cassidy is a famous singer who fronted the band Cassidy before she went off on her own. Now she’s dealing with the unwanted posting of her sex tape to the internet. Helena was Michelle’s guitarist before the band broke up, creating bad blood between Helena and Michelle. Now Helena is a music teacher.

Kennedy is Jen’s tennis (and de facto life) coach. She was a professional tennis player when she was young, but pictures of her at that age seem to be nonexistent. Nicolette (who thinks her husband is having an affair) plays tennis with Jen and spreads antivax conspiracy theories. Beattie is Jen’s former sister-in-law. Beattie has never been able to accept Jen’s claim that Jason was a criminal and believes that Jen is responsible for his disappearance. Lauren isn’t a guest but she owns the island home that Jen rented and wants to make sure the women don’t trash it.

The only male at the party is a hot Spanish chef. Someone cuts his throat in the kitchen while the women are busy getting drunk and sniping at each other. The island has no cell service and the landline isn’t working. The house has wifi but all messaging and email apps have been blocked. The boat that is their only way off the island has disappeared.

My initial thought was: one of these women is the killer. Followed by: the killer is going to pick off the rest of the women one by one. After having those thoughts, I hoped Chris Brookyre wouldn’t follow such an obvious formula. While I was pleased that Brookmyre went in a different direction, the story needed more murder victims. Nearly every character is too annoying to live.

One of the women disappears. The remaining women are provided with a new messaging app that transmits instructions from someone using the name The Reaper. The Reaper has is holding the missing woman as a hostage. The Reaper wants one of the women to confess her sin and threatens to kill the hostage f the confession is withheld. That’s at least a modest twist on the usual slasher plot.

The women have a collective abundance of sins, but they aren’t sure which one the Reaper has in mind. They don't have time to screw around because the hostage has been planted on a block of ice with a noose around her neck. Maybe she’ll slip off the ice and die immediately. On the other hand, it takes ice some time to melt in Scotland. The uncertain timeline for the hostage’s demise seems a bit silly, but it gives the women time to scamper around the island while engaging in endless conversations.

The women decide to search for the hostage in teams of two. Jen and Beattie don’t get along so naturally they team up. Michelle and Helena don’t get along so naturally they team up. The teams make so sense, but they work as contrivances to set up dramatic disclosures about the characters’ respective sins that advance the plot only because the plot consists largely of dramatic disclosures. The anguish the characters feel about their past misadventures and their hand-wringing confessions takes up entirely too much of the novel’s word count.

Domestic drama permeates the novel. A husband threatens to kill the kids if a wife leaves him. A husband’s “coercive control” of his wife amounts to serial rape. A character confesses to having an affair with another character’s husband. A character’s alcoholic mother was unable to care for her. A character gives up a baby for adoption. More than one character is jealous of the success that other characters have achieved. The excess of drama eventually gives way to melodramatic confrontations that end with melodramatic expressions of forgiveness and regret. The ease of proclamations like “I forgive you” and “I missed you” are unconvincing after a character has spent a lifetime saying “I hate you” and “I will never forgive you.”

The story creates interest more than suspense. The reveal — who is the Reaper? — depends on another contrivance. It isn't surprising because contrived surprises are the norm in this novel. The plot wrap up is too tidy. By the end, the reader is meant to love characters who seemed hateful in the early pages, but I wasn’t ready to join them in a group hug.

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