The Bottom Line: This D.C. crime thriller with off-the-charts emotional intelligence is a must-read.
U.S. congressional staffer Ben Walsh doesn’t usually receive texts from his wife during working hours. When he does, the first three words are a comfort: “I love you.” But what comes next fills him with unease: “I just need you to know that.”
When Veronica doesn’t answer his calls, Ben is increasingly filled with paranoia and anxiety. Could the mother of his children be cheating on him? Soon, he learns that a shooting happened along her daily running route in Rock Creek Park. When Ben still can’t reach her, he fears the worst. Thankfully, Veronica isn’t listed among the shooting victims. But that news adds little comfort as he struggles to make sense of what might be happening.
Born in Mexico, Veronica is a math professor at Georgetown University. Her star pupil was Jacob Jordan, a man serving time for an attempted assassination of the President of the United States.
A day after her mysterious text message, Ben is baffled (Not off in some hotel room, not a victim in the shooting, and not here at home where she belonged). He files a missing persons report, but naturally realizes that he needs to take matters into his own hands. He interviews her colleagues. He speaks with her family. He explores Georgetown in hopes of finding anyone with a potential lead. Gradually, he discovers that there’s far more to his wife than he ever suspected. Is Veronica even her real name?
Debut novelist Matthew Becker makes extensive use of flashbacks as Ben unpacks both old and new information about his wife. As Ben turns amateur sleuth, we spend a lot of time in his head, most of which is engrossing as he rides wave upon wave of emotions while attempting to solve his wife’s disappearance. There are moments when he truly doesn’t want to believe what he discovers. At times, it’s unclear whether something is really a sign, or whether it’s in his imagination. Becker walks the line between reality and imagination expertly.
On its own merits, the basic plot would add up to a satisfying read. But Becker – himself a mathematician – delivers gold as he begins laying the groundwork for a number of math-focused payoffs in the second half of the novel. Math geeks will delight as he references symbology, historical figures (“wasn’t the Unabomber a great mathematician?”) and a truly fascinating theorem that may be relevant to the investigation. And for those of us who failed to advance past basic Algebra, Becker provides just enough exposition so we can follow along.
