Britta Baxter was a famed fitness instructor who had built a fortune through her popular DVDs. She lived in a grand mansion beside Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota with her often-absent husband, Oliver, an acclaimed surgeon. Now she has been found dead in the water, and Oliver seems to be unmoved by the event. There are other local characters whom the murder has affected more deeply, including Britta’s cousin Maxine Thomsen and her husband, Noah. Detective Josephine Kelly arrives on the scene and has her own suspicions about who may be guilty. When a second body is discovered, the complicated interwoven histories of some of Lake Shetek’s residents raise the prospect of a multitude of motives and no shortage of suspects. Will the no-nonsense cop, unimpressed by the affluence of the lake-siders, crack the case, or will the murderer be able to slide into the shadows forever?
Quinn Avery’s RIGHT ACROSS THE BAY is an ambitious novel that uses multiple first-person narrators split across various timelines. Character backstories are revealed, and sometimes concealed, via flashback scenes. For the most part, Avery keeps on top of this device and uses it to plant numerous red herrings in the minds of her readers, whose suspicions will flip and flop as each new nugget of information is uncovered. That some of these plot twists rather stretch credulity is a rather moot point. Accepting the far-fetched plot is key to enjoying the book. Readers who embrace the pulpy excesses of RIGHT ACROSS THE BAY right up to its eye-popping finale will get to enjoy an operatic wild ride into the darker corners of the human psyche.
Avery is a prolific author. This is her 42nd book. And though she may lack some of the finesse and subtlety that would place her amongst the first rank of thriller writers, she does know how to tell a gripping tale. And, like Nora Roberts, Avery is unafraid to mix her thrills with a heavy dose of flowery romance. So as characters grow close, there are “violent flutters of anticipation” and “wild beats of the heart” that rattle the body. Or as Maxine relays in one moment of intimacy with Noah: “The brilliant stretch of his lips sends a tsunami-sized rush of tingles down to the soles of my feet.” All of this results in a psycho-sexual drama that demands to be read in one sitting.
RIGHT ACROSS THE BAY is an enthralling thriller with more than its fair share of twists and turns. Quinn Avery displays a knack for hooking in her readers right from the opening paragraph, blending moments of ripe romantic intrigue with high-tension thrills.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader