I See You by Clare Mackintosh
My rating: 3/5 cats
this is a fun thriller, but it requires the reader to accept its premise without questioning its logic, and to suspend disbelief like a mofo. if you can do that, you’ll have a good time. if you cannot, this is not the book for you.
i can medium do it, so while i enjoyed reading this for the rush and the whodunnit of it all, there were just certain things i could not look past as a reader. it’s one of those page-turnery books i loved at the time of reading, but it’s forgettable and a little silly after it’s all over.
it’s a psychological suspense novel and it’s one whose goal is to take the quotidian and creepify it, so the reader is left unsettled and uneasy in a familiar, taken-for-granted part of their daily life. this one focuses on the already-harrowing experience of public transportation, casting a sinister light on the straphanging lifestyle. which, yes, is what The Girl on the Train did, but this is completely its own thing, although paula hawkins does blurb it, because british transportation-based thriller writing women gotta stick together.
zoe walker is stuck on a stalled train during her commute home one night, forced to read the parts of the paper she wouldn’t ordinarily in her desperation for diversion, when she notices a photo of herself in a classified ad with no information other than a phone number and a web address: findtheone.com. naturally confused and concerned, once she gets home she tries to get to the bottom of it, but the number is a dead end, and the site requires a password. her grown children and live-in boyfriend don’t share her alarm – assuring her that the small picture might be of someone else entirely, and zoe reluctantly concedes, although she is still a bit apprehensive. when she discovers that a woman whose picture ran in the same ad space was later murdered, her dread grows and she contacts the police, who do not take her concerns seriously until the pattern continues and zoe finds herself in real danger.
the story is split narratively between zoe and kelly swift, a detective demoted to smalltime police work after assaulting a rape suspect, who has been trying to claw her way back to the big leagues ever since. she sees connections between zoe’s story and a pickpocketing crime she’s been assigned, and she insinuates herself into the case, thrilled to be investigating real crimes once more, eager to impress the other detectives and shed her tarnished reputation. which does not mean that she’s going to play it cool and careful – for all the strong contributions she makes to the investigation, she also behaves unprofessionally a number of times, compromising the case and making more enemies.
in the tradition of psychological suspense, paranoia grows throughout the novel, and suspicion is cast on many people close to zoe, increasing her anxiety and leaving her with no one to trust. many red herrings, many tense situations, much atmospheric dread.
and also a ton of implausibilities, some of which i will address in spoilertown below.
if you are yourself on a stalled train looking for a diversion, this is an excellent choice. okay, that’s a bit glib and unfair – this is an entertaining book, but you really need to avoid questioning it, or you’re just going to get yourself into a tizzy. it’s worth a read, but it’s not changing the psych suspense game or anything.
my gripes follow, and they are spoilery, so don’t ruin the book for yourself by clicking, okay?
View Spoiler » the book wants you to accept that there are tons of lazy men out there who are just waiting for the opportunity to become a murdery rapist and are willing to pay for that opportunity, but don’t have the discipline to choose and stalk a victim on their own.
even taking the criminal element out of the equation, this business plan makes no sense. is it that hard to meet a lady in the more traditional setting of a bar or a club? or even on an online dating service where women are actually looking for a suitor? because judging by the women that were chosen to be unwittingly drawn into this scheme, many of them weren’t even available for a relationship. and i’m not sure how knowing a stranger’s commuting details gives anyone an advantage in making a connection. life isn’t a rom-com, and i would never accept the advances of a stranger who approached me on the subway. that’s just urban sensibility 101. so if this was intended to be a dating service, without turning into what it turned into, the subjects were poorly chosen. none of these men are going to want their money back when they discover that their targets are in long-term relationships? what is it they’re even paying for? how hard is it to find a pretty girl and track her movements yourself? and maybe i’m just ruined by the unpredictability of the new york subway system, but there ain’t nothing certain about my daily commute. every day is an adventure of “when will the train come?” and “how crowded will the platform be?” and “which car will have the unbearably smelly person with no pants on lying down across the entire bank of seats?” you take what you get, and there’s no pattern to my commute other than the line, direction and the general time, and even that is fairly flexible.
once the service became criminal, the business plan makes even less sense. now both parties are relying on the discretion of strangers to cover up their crimes. the men are trusting an anonymous service to cover the tracks they’ve left in downloading the details of their particular woman and the service itself is trusting the men not to blab to their friends. neither of these are smart trust falls. and putting pictures of real women in the paper is bananas. obviously, someone’s going to see themselves or someone they know and start trying to get to the bottom of it. none of this makes any sense to me, but granted – it does make for a gripping tale.
as far as the whodunnit reveal, that prickles another of my pet peeves – the perfect villain syndrome. yes, i can accept that there are sociopaths out there who are passing; able to blend in without those closest to them knowing that they’re one bad day away from being murdered. but really? having two villains here who are both super close to their victims (plural to include katie) and the mask never slipped even once? to go from dinner party to knife-stabby in a heartbeat just seems implausible to me. people have tells. and if they want you dead, literally, you will usually know it.
also, murder seems a punishment a bit disproportionate to zoe’s supposed crimes. not to mention all the other victims, who were guilty of absolutely nothing. i find it hard to fathom that a woman would be down with dispassionately setting up a bunch of completely innocent women to be murdered or sexually assaulted, even with the winky “who, me?” of plausible deniability.
and a minor point, but zoe’s boss getting angry about her terrified reaction when he reaches across her sleeping body to undo her seat belt when he is driving her home, knowing what she’s been going through, is completely baffling. even if she wasn’t already in a state of fear over the threats she’d been experiencing, it’s completely bananas that a man she’s not even particularly close to would think it was okay to do that. and to then get offended at her outrage and confusion. that’s a pretty intimate gesture, and a hell of a thing to wake up to. a grown-ass woman can unhook her own seat belt, and it was an invasive and unnecessary gesture. was it meant to be a time-saver? bizarre. this is the kind of thing that bothers me as a reader – the only reason it’s in there is to cast suspicion on him, and it’s an inauthentic situation in any real-world scenario. « Hide Spoiler
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