review

THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK – KRISTEN LEPIONKA

By karen t. brissette

Posted on November 8, 2016

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka
My rating: 5/5 cats
One Star

My father always had a drink in his hand. It was part of him, like his broad shoulders or his temper or his antifreeze-blue eyes. It was the catalyst to every good time and every bad time he ever had. It was a magnifying glass he put himself under, revealing the truth of him. It was the only thing we had in common, the only thing we ever agreed on.

this is an unexpectedly strong debut.

debut novels are always a risk: synopses are written with the express purpose of enticing a reader, and blurbs are often the result of author friendships or other writers in the publisher’s stable doing a favor for the team, and i usually doubt their sincerity. so, even though the wonderful james renner blurbed this book enthusiastically, i went into this a wary reader.

part of my apprehension was because i wasn’t in love with the cover (i’m totally shallow, i know), but also because of the character. going into it knowing she was a bisexual private investigator with emotional damage and a drinking problem, i worried that it would be:

A) a clichéd genderswap of the noir archetype – sam spade in a skirt.

B) romantic suspense heavy on the romance (or at least on the intercoursing), light on the crime aspect.

C) some sort of lisbeth salander nonsense – a loose cannon of a woman operating outside of the law, defined by casual sex and violence with no emotional depth other than generic damage.

but it is not even one of those things.

i’ve read so many crime fiction/psych suspense novels this year featuring female investigators, whether professional or of the amateur sleuth variety, and nearly every one of them has been flat or stock in nature. which is fine for someone like me who can focus on the story aspect of a book even if it has weak characters, but is still a little disappointing. the only one i’ve read recently that came across as a real flesh-and-blood woman was conway in tana french’s The Trespasser. but now i can add roxane weary to that tally. the two definitely wouldn’t be friends if they met at some mystery novel character convention, but they would absolutely respect each other. for lepionka to have succeeded in both story and character her first time out is very encouraging for the future of her career.

sure, roxane has daddy issues, which can be a cliché in the “female in a traditionally male-dominated profession” character type, but her cop father was a complicated, near-legendary man, and his recent death in the line of duty left many people carrying the weight of issues – his wife, his sons, his former partner, and others with whom he’d worked in his 38 years on the force; people who revered him, despite his gruff, unfuzzy nature.

roxane and her brother andrew, in particular, find themselves in the same emotionally conflicted place:

“I think… that after losing Dad, you just don’t want to pick back up and keep going.”

I didn’t respond right away. Then I said, “That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“Why?”

“You’re scared. That it would mean you’re as over it as you’re going to get.”

I swallowed my second shot and thought about that. Neither of us had a good relationship with Frank, but that didn’t make it any easier. In fact, it might’ve made it worse. “Aren’t you?” I said.

“Roxane, I’m fucking terrified.”

roxane became a private investigator despite her father’s feelings on the matter, and she’s very good at what she does. however, after his death she’s been hitting the bottle harder than usual; wallowing in angry grief and not at her professional best when her brother matt sends a client her way; a woman named danielle stockton – the sister of a man who has been on death row for fifteen years after allegedly killing his girlfriend sarah’s parents, and presumably sarah as well, who went missing the same night. danielle swears she saw sarah the other day, and needs someone to track her down, and soon, since brad’s execution date has just been scheduled and she only has two months to prove his innocence. the police have plenty of evidence incriminating brad, and are unwilling to reopen the investigation, so danielle is desperate for assistance outside the police force.

desperation gets you roxane weary, struggling to cope even without the stress of investigating a case everyone considers solved, especially when she discovers a connection between sarah’s disappearance and one of her father’s cold cases.

already, the book has plenty to keep the reader interested – the ticking clock, the compromised sleuth, the shadow of her father as she follows in his footsteps… there’s also excellent dramatic friction between roxane and the local police force, who do not want her investigating this matter. belmont, ohio is a town 13 sq. miles in size, where the police have little to do apart from responding to smalltown complaints, as roxane discovers when she gets herself a police scanner:

One thing was immediately clear: people in Belmont called the cops a lot.

Even shortly after ten in the morning, there were complaints about noise, about traffic jams at afternoon kindergarten drop-off at the Montessori school, about a suspicious individual entering a neighbor’s house.

(“I advised the caller that the individual was actually the neighbor, wearing a new coat.”)

the cops don’t want one of their few “big” cases undermined, and they have a professional disdain for private investigators, who although licensed, are not part of their blue family. roxane is dismissed as a pest; an amateur, despite her impressive track record.

this is literary crime fiction; it’s not the kind of book that ends with a cliffhanger or a huge action sequence at every chapter’s end, nor is there any skimping on character development. it’s a more mature, steadily-paced novel that borrows elements from the noir sensibility without aping its stiff and stylized tone. this is noir with curves.*

the investigation process is handled well – the case unfolds unpredictably but not unrealistically. there are plenty of red herrings and misleading clues causing roxane to make some missteps and the reader is locked right in it with her. she does indeed prove to be an excellent investigator without coming across as a contrived mastermind solving the case without breaking a sweat. she’s smart, but she’s not infallible, and she makes many mistakes and errors in judgment along the way, but she’s far from bumbling. even better – she gets hangovers and suffers like a human does, instead of just bouncing back to work the next day like some superhero.

that’s the kind of stuff that excites me as a reader, that she’s a believable, human character, and even more refreshing, she reads like a real woman instead of some neutered or hypermasculine figure. she’s certainly not girly, but she’s a woman, psychologically fleshed-out with a complex personal life full of self-sabotage and discomfort with emotional intimacy.

i loved the relationship between roxane and her father’s former partner tom, and even more so her relationship with her brother andrew, which felt so damn genuine in its mix of respect and familial protectiveness.

“Roxane, you’re a grown-ass woman and you can do whatever you want,” he said, “but you’re also my baby sister and I worry about you.”

and yes – she has both a male and a female lover, but there’s no gratuitous sex slapped in just to keep the reader distracted from a ho-hum crime plot, nor is her life some series of anonymous hookups. both relationships matter to her; they provide something essential to her, flawed as both relationships are.

The night of the funeral had been a protest fuck, an act of defiance. But we’d seen each other quite a few times in the nine months since. There was nothing to it, just stress relief, pain relief, all of the above. But I still needed those things.

and her need is deeper than she allows herself to admit.

a firecracker of a debut. and not one of those pussy little sparklers you give to kids -it’s just an all-around excellent piece of crime fiction, and i’m hoping lepionka returns to this character in future books, because she’s a breath of fresh air in a sea of half-assed, forgettable female sleuths.

also, i simply must applaud her taste in food, because a hot dog topped with sriracha cream cheese and Fritos and a side of Tater Tots sounds like something i need to be eating right now and also every night forever.

* i wish i could say that it is like megan abbott’s excellent girlnoir, because comparisons are good for excitement-generating, but it’s not. it’s great in its own way, but abbott sticks to the noir tradition more formally, while giving it her own spin.
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here are some pictures from her recent book-signing, if you are interested in seeing what she looks like reading a book!

kristen is delighted to be reading at bluestockings here in nyfc