I read Liz Moore’s more recent novel, God of the Woods, earlier this year. That novel captured my attention right from the start with its compelling prose and intriguing cast of characters, but ultimately I felt Moore had let the story get away from her, unable to properly balance the various sideplots and backstories. The ending, too, was a tremendous disappointment.
This novel finds Moore focused on a smaller band of characters, but similarly splitting focus between the present and the past. Her protagonist, Mickey Fitzpatrick is a young female officer with the Philadelphia P.D. She faces casual sexism on the job while also struggling to raise her young son basically on her own. Her family is a source of conflict as well. After her mother died from an overdose, Mickey’s drug-addict father abandoned her and her sister Kacey. They were raised by an embittered grandmother. Now, Kacey herself is hooked on drugs and perpetually running afoul of the law, something that is hard for Mickey to deal with.
When Mickey responds to a call involving a dead female sex worker, it hits home that she hasn’t seen or heard from her sister in months. When several other dead women turn up in the following weeks, she begins to panic that Kacey’s name will be added to the list of victims. Ignoring orders from her superiors, Mickey begins an investigation of her own, flouting proper procedure to find her sister or catch the killer, whichever comes first.
Moore struggles again with the pacing of her story, sometimes abandoning the hunt for the killer for lengthy periods of time to cover Mickey’s home life with her son Thomas. If you’ve ever been watching a movie about the hunt for a serial killer and found yourself asking, “I wonder who’s watching the cop’s kids?” then boy is this book for you.
The emphases on childcare and family trauma don’t leave enough room for actual police work and investigation. As a result, the reveal of the killer’s identity has a real “spin the wheel and choose one male character to be evil” feeling to it.
I could maybe forgive the lack of a real mystery if Mickey wasn’t a hard character to like on top of everything. In an effort at realism, perhaps, Moore has her do some messed up stuff, including one unforgivable betrayal that isn’t really wiped off the books by the novel’s conclusion. By the end, I was fed up, annoyed by both Moore and her central character.