Trust Her by Flynn Berry

Published by ‎ Viking on June 25, 2024

Trust Her explores the depths of a 36-year-old woman from Northern Island whose life was upended after she helped her sister help the IRA before she became an informer for MI5. Now she lives in Dublin with her son, having separated from her husband because he had an affair during her pregnancy.

Tessa and Marian both assisted the IRA, but Marian built bombs while Tessa essentially acted as a courier. For reasons that aren’t revealed until late in the story, Marian turned on the IRA and became an informer. She passed on information to Tessa who passed it along to an MI5 agent named Eammon. Tessa was attracted to Eammon but managed to keep her pants on during her career as an informant’s helper. As the story progresses, it seems increasingly likely that her pants will come off.

When suspicious IRA members interrogated Tessa and Marian, they managed to survive. They fled to Dublin where they began new lives. Tessa took a job as a subeditor at a newspaper, married and started a family. Marian married a cameraman in the movie industry and has a newborn of her own.

Now an IRA operative named Royce is back in Tessa’s life. He wants her to make contact with Eammon and turn him into a double agent who will provide intelligence to the IRA. Why Eammon even dreams that is possible is something of a mystery, but when he threatens Tessa’s family, she feels she has no choice but to give it a go. Marian isn’t so sure but why the IRA hasn’t already killed Marian isn’t quite clear. She seems like an easy target.

I didn’t have much sympathy for Tessa, not because of her tenuous connection to the IRA, but because she confesses that connection to the police when her sister is a couple of hours late returning from a hike. Tessa makes needless trouble for herself (and for her sister) with little reason to believe that telling the police about her history with the IRA is either necessary or wise. Naturally, the cop begins to bully her.

The story leads to a climax that doesn’t merit its suspenseful buildup. A surprise near the end changes the game for Tessa a bit but doesn’t quite resolve all the issues that the novel develops. A final, much darker surprise promises to give the story some real weight, but Flynn Berry arguably cops out to deliver a softer ending that readers might prefer. Blowing up a suspense balloon and letting all the air out before it pops struck me as a copout.

Still, the character development in Trust Her is first rate. The plot is strong, and if the ending is a bit disappointing, a final feel-good chapter suggests the possibility of redemption when familial love displaces darkness. I can’t dislike that message, so my sense is that most readers will enjoy the story.

RECOMMENDED

A Double Life by Flynn Berry

Published by Viking on July 31, 2018

The police have been looking for Colin Spenser for 26 years. He is wanted for the murder of his wife’s nanny, Emma. The police theorize that he mistook Emma for his wife Faye, who survived a subsequent attack and was able to identify Colin as her assailant.

The case made headlines because Colin Spenser was Lord Spenser, an earl. His brother and sister helped him flee and then told the press that his wife hired someone to kill the nanny so that Colin would be blamed. The family has enough money to mount an effective smear campaign and the British press laps it up, because smears are so much more interesting than the truth.

Colin’s daughter Claire has changed her name but lives in unlikely fear of her father’s return, concealing pepper spray in various locations inside her home. Claire’s other worry is her brother Robbie, whose drug addiction causes seizures and other problems.

A Double Life gives the reader a glimpse of Colin’s courtship of Faye, their honeymoon and separation and short-lived reconciliation. Sometimes the backstory is told from Claire’s childhood perspective and sometimes in the third person, focusing on Faye. Other flashbacks acquaint the reader with Claire’s perspective of the night that Colin committed murder. On occasion we get some insight into Robbie’s life, although he is largely a secondary character.

The main plot follows Claire’s clandestine search for answers about the role various people played to conceal her father’s guilt and current whereabouts. During the course of her stalking and still disguising her true identity, she befriends the daughter of her father’s brother, who has not seen Claire since childhood. She meets other family members, considers rumors about their actions on the night that her father killed the nanny, and plots a course of action after learning where he might be living.

I admire the fluid style in which A Double Life is written and the careful attention Flynn Berry pays to the details of Claire’s strained life. Berry does a fine job of depicting British aristocracy in the unflattering light that the story requires without turning them into stereotypes. While it is easy to sympathize with Claire and to understand her obsession with her father, Berry does not make a convincing case for her continued fear of him a quarter century after he disappeared.

The buildup to the climax generates a modest level of suspense, but the climax is underwhelming. The plot resolves with a couple of twists, but the story’s construction creates the anticipation of a more surprising ending than the one Berry delivered.

Colin is loosely based on Lord Lucan, who is suspected of murdering his wife’s nanny before disappearing. I suspect that the true story is more interesting than Berry’s fictionalized version. While much of the story is strong, the ending dampened my enthusiasm for the novel as a whole.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS