THE DEEPEST LAKE, eerie, nasty flensing-knife to the guts of the writing industry

THE DEEPEST LAKE
ANDROMEDA ROMANO-LAX
Soho Crime
$26.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this atmospheric thriller set at a luxury memoir-writing workshop on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, a grieving mother goes undercover to investigate her daughter’s mysterious death.

Rose, the mother of 20-something aspiring writer Jules, has waited three months for answers about her daughter’s death. Why was she swimming alone when she feared the water? Why did she stop texting days before she was last seen? When the official investigation rules the death an accidental drowning, the body possibly lost forever in Central America’s deepest lake, an unsatisfied Rose travels to the memoir workshop herself. She hopes to draw her own conclusion—and find closure.

When Rose arrives, she is swept into the curious world created by her daughter’s literary hero, the famous writing teacher Eva Marshall, a charismatic woman known for her candid—and controversial—memoirs. As Rose uncovers details about the days leading up to Jules’s disappearance, she begins to suspect that this glamorous retreat package is hiding ugly truths. Is Lake Atitlan a place where traumatized women come to heal or a place where deeper injury is inflicted?

Perfect for fans of Delia Owens, Celeste Ng, and Julia Bartz, The Deepest Lake is both a sharp look at the sometimes toxic, exclusionary world of high-class writing workshops and an achingly poignant view of a mother’s grief.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Simplicity is a virtue in plotting, if not writing, a thriller. What complexity there is, in a truly involving example of the genre, comes from the characters and what they want that takes them far outside the safe confines of bourgeois life. The death of a child's good for rage, and even revenge; but the death of a child who evokes a guilt or a regret in a parent...that will move one far outside behavioral norms.

This iteration of the mother-hunting-murderer starts to show us complexity about halfway through. The first half is a not-that-exciting takedown of the Writing Industry as a hollow, pretentious ego farm. Been there, read that. I kept going because, as a hardened old reader, there was something prickling my arm hairs, something I couldn't quite put a finger on. The writing about the titular lake was lovely, but not unusually so. The character of the snobby writing coach, if that's what she is and not some super Svengali creating murderous minions out of lonely women who like to write, is in a word predictable. The mother...easiest point of failure because pathos wears thin fast...it's the mother, I thought. But why? echoed back at me.

I couldn't answer myself.

On I read, waiting for the...something. That was it! I was reading a book waiting for this unknown, but subtly prefigured somehow I couldn't quite grasp...something to occur. Let me say that again: Without being able to say what, or when, I got my expectation set on, I was hooked into not being able to put this book down. To beat you about the forehead some more with what an impressive feat that is, I'll tell you that I started reading mysteries with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew in...well, let's just say people born that year are grandparents. Several times over.

No, I won't tell you what happens. I will tell you that, while I was satisfied that what ended the book ended the story, I was that smallest bit, that vague hint, disgruntled at how long it took to get there. That constitutes a quibble given how much enjoyment I'm going to get from exploring Author Romano-Lax's back catalog from Soho Crime. The synopsis writer gives you some very apt comps, and those should hint at the direction you can expect the story to take.