Tell Me Who You Are by Louisa Luna

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on June 4, 2024

Most psychological thrillers fail to take a deep dive into psychology. Tell Me Who You Are features a psychiatrist who lectures the reader about various psychological maladies, including dissociative personality disorder — commonly referred to as a multiple or split personality disorder — the existence of which is controversial. Certain characters in the novel — maybe all the important ones — might be delusional or deranged. The ambiguous truth that underlies their apparent maladies supplies the intrigue that engages the reader's interest.

Caroline Strange is a psychiatrist. Her patients call her Dr. Caroline. A local online rag published a story that included her on a list of the ten worst doctors in Brooklyn. The story was written by Ellen Garcia. It didn’t take Caroline long to find out where Ellen lived.

Some of the story is written from Caroline’s point of view. It quickly becomes apparent that she might not be a reliable narrator. Nor is she anyone a reader would want to know. She’s self-absorbed and self-important and scornful of her patients — the kind of therapist who probably belongs on a Ten Worst list. She doesn’t want to be burdened by her sons or her mother, making her self-indulgent both as a parent and as a child.

Some of the story is narrated by Gordon Strong. He was Caroline’s next-door neighbor when, as a child, she gave him some disturbing news. Not long after that, Gordon killed everyone in his house, except Caroline, who was staying overnight. Or did he?

Gordon is the most convincing character. Gordon was laid off from his job. He drinks too much. He’s portrayed as a man who is disintegrating, who has turned to alcohol to cope with his vanishing self-esteem. It doesn’t help that his father belittled him while he was growing up. Gordon progressively demolishes the hedge he’s trying to trim, the hedge perhaps serving as a symbol for his life.

Several chapters are narrated by Ellen as she’s being held captive. After a few days of captivity, Ellen launches into a monolog that amounts to “It’s hard to be a woman.” It’s well-written but too well-written to be the delirious rant of a water-deprived kidnap victim. For a woman who is starving and dehydrated, she’s way too chatty.

The meat of the story begins with a walk-in patient who tells Dr. Caroline that he thinks he’s going to kill someone. Then he says, “and I know who you really are.” The man, who calls himself Nelson, does seem to know something about Caroline’s past.

After Ellen disappears, the police question Caroline on the theory that she might resents Ellen’s unkind article about her. Caroline points the police toward Nelson as a more likely suspect. As the story unfolds, the police are more focused on Caroline than Nelson, whose existence they can’t establish. Caroline decides to track down Nelson herself.

It isn’t clear whether Nelson is in fact a criminal or the subject of Caroline’s warped delusions. I could have gone either way on that question for most of the novel. While the story is a bit farfetched, the clever plot kept me reading with interest. The story ends with a mild surprise that reflects Louisa Luna’s willingness to take chances. She understands that novels can be good even if the key characters are unlikable. Because Luna pulls off a difficult plot and fills it with difficult but carefully developed characters, Tell Me Who You Are stands apart from run-of-the-mill farfetched thrillers.

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Hideout by Louisa Luna

Published by Doubleday on March 8, 2022

The third Alice Vega novel cements the protagonist as a driven action hero who is unhindered by any internal restraint on her violent tendencies. Vega is interesting in part because she is a borderline sociopath, in part because she is likely somewhere “on the spectrum” (Vega has little use for social interaction), and in part because she recognizes those tendencies and gives some thought to whether they serve her well.

Anton Fohl hires Vega to find Zeb “Wrong Way” Williams, a kicker who played football for Cal. Instead of kicking a winning field goal in a rivalry game, Williams famously pushed the holder out of the way, grabbed the ball, and ran the wrong way, through the wrong end zone and out of the stadium, never to be seen (verifiably) again. That was in 1984. Fohl’s wife Carmen is an heiress who used to date Williams. She was hurt when he disappeared. For reasons of his own, Fohl wants Vega to locate Williams. Finding missing persons is her thing. She’s rather single-minded in her pursuit.

Years earlier, another private detective traced William to a small town in Oregon, where his photograph was taken with some other people. Vega begins her search in the Oregon town. Her key witness is a waitress who knew and had an argument with Williams before he disappeared from the town. Many of the people Vega interviews seem evasive, making it clear that at least one powerful person in the town is keeping a secret.

Vega’s investigation is sidetracked by her encounters with white supremacists who think she should mind her own business and leave their town alone. Using a white supremacy network, they make trouble for Vega’s father and her friend (and occasional lover and business partner) Max Caplan. The trouble impairs her relationship with Caplan, an event that deeply disturbs Caplan while causing Vega to make a decision she regrets.

For a chunk of the novel, the white supremacy subplot overshadows the missing person story. The aftermath of the trouble that the supremacists make with Caplan and Vega’s father highlight Vega’s difficulty expressing herself to the people she loves (or relating to them on any emotional level). She expresses herself more eloquently by breaking kneecaps and doing other nasty things to the white supremacists.

After Vega clears away obstacles, she gets the search back on track, figures out the town’s hidden secrets, and finds an answer to the mystery she was asked to solve. The plot’s resolution is both surprising and satisfying.

Like the earlier Vega novels, Hideout moves at a good pace, balancing credible action scenes with relentless detection. Vega doesn’t have time for small talk or rest breaks. Those personality quirks keep the plot in constant motion. Readers won’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about Vega, but it is easy to sympathize with her as she struggles to move forward without pushing away the people she cares about. Readers might have warm (if not fuzzy) feelings for Caplan, simply because he’s a decent man who loves his daughter and is tormented by his love for Vega. Characterization combines with a smart action/detective plot to make Hideout a good choice for crime novel fans who enjoy reading about tough, intelligent female protagonists.

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The Janes by Louisa Luna

Published by Doubleday on January 21, 2020

The Janes is the second Alice Vega novel, following Two Girls Down. Both books are a fresh take on the concept of a private investigator who tracks down missing children. While most protagonists who track down missing kids are ridiculously self-aggrandizing, reminding everyone they meet how much they care about victims, Vega cares about being paid. Yeah, she cares about the kids too, but she doesn’t talk about it. In fact, she doesn’t talk about much of anything. Unlike thriller heroes who can’t stop talking about themselves or recalling their difficult childhoods or berating others for not caring enough about victims, Vega keeps her mouth shut and gets the job done. Vega is not loquacious; she lets her actions speak.

The title refer to two Jane Does, two female children who have been killed and dumped. A piece of paper with Alice Vega’s name is clutched in the hand of one of the dead girls. We learn in an early scene that Spanish-speaking girls are being held for sex work in a “television room.” If a month goes by when no customer picks them, or if customers complain about their performance, they are taken to the garage by a fellow named Rafa, where something bad will happen. Vega has been in the news thanks to her child rescue efforts, which is how the girls in the television room know about her.

The girls are wearing IUDs with serial numbers that are only five numbers apart. Vega assumes there are at least four more girls where these two game from. A couple of police officers hire Vega to track down the girls. To that end, Vega doubles the proposed fee so she can use half to pay her friend, Max Caplan.

Cap is a retired cop with a potentially lucrative and easy job awaiting him. He’s not sure he wants to take on another adventure with Vega, who has a tendency to place him in dangerous situations. His daughter is even less certain that he should be risking his life. But Cap has a thing for Vega, who played him in Two Girls Down with a kiss he can’t forget. Whether she has any actual feelings for Cap won’t be clear until the novel ends.

Vega goes about her business efficiently, without ever talking about herself or her worldview. I love that about her. She wasn’t trained in the military or by a martial arts expert. She’s fairly small and doesn’t rely on superior fighting techniques when she places herself in danger, as she regularly does. If she needs to overcome a larger foe, she hits them in the knee with a bolt cutter. Or she shoots them in a nonlethal location. I love the fact Louisa Luna doesn’t make her protagonist a superhero. Cap is a bit more philosophical, and certainly the more demonstrative of the two, which makes him a good counterpoint.

I’m not typically a fan of human trafficking stories (thriller writers love to imagine there is human trafficking everywhere, but in reality, it’s pretty rare in the US). This story won me over because of the intriguing twists it takes, as Vega investigates corruption and an off-the-books approach to immigrant detention in various police and government agencies. The plot is credibly low-key and all the more fascinating because of it. The Alice Vega series establishes Louisa Luna as a thriller writer worth following.

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Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna

Published by Doubleday on January 9, 2018

Jamie Brandt leaves her two daughters, Kylie and Bailey, in the car while she runs into a K-Mart for a birthday present. When she comes out, the kids are gone. Yes, this is an “every parent’s nightmare” story. But it’s better than most child kidnapping stories, which tend to overdo scenes of hand-wringing and weepiness and too often feature self-righteous protagonists who make a point of telling the reader how deeply they care about children, unlike all the people who care less than they do.

As parents go, Jamie is kind of a wreck even before the kids disappear. She hires Alice Vega to recover her kids. Vega has made a reputation as someone who gets kids back by working harder than the police. In her own way, she’s just as screwed up as Jamie, but that doesn’t stop her from being competent. It also makes her interesting, as does the fact that she hates men, although to be fair, she seems to hate everyone. Vega cares about child victims, but she also cares about getting paid big bucks. She isn’t self-righteous about what she does, and that’s refreshing.

Max Caplan is another interesting character. A cop who retired in disgrace, Caplan now works as a private investigator. He’s also a bit of a wreck but, he isn’t self-pitying about it. In fact, he wrecked his life to help a friend, so he’s a decent guy. His daughter doesn’t live with him, but when they’re together, she’s his touchstone of moral authority.

Vega hires Caplan as her local source of information. They make a good pair of contrasting characters as the story moves forward. The novel succeeds as a character-driven story that pairs two broken people on a joint quest who gain strength from each other.

There are elements of a whodunit in the plot, but this isn’t the kind of mystery that makes it possible to guess the culprit’s identity. Two Girls Down is more a police procedural than a mystery — although the police and the FBI get in the way more than they help, so the novel might be more accurately described as a private investigator procedural. There’s even a hint of romance (opposites attract), but not enough to get in the way of the story.

While the plot emphasizes investigation over action, there is enough action to keep the story moving at the decent rate. The investigation creates a reasonable amount of suspense. The last pages combine action with suspense to generate the kind of tension a thriller should have. This is a strong debut, and one that could easily develop into an enjoyable series, which I have to assume is Louisa Luna’s plan.

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