Whenever there is a film, thriller or a psychological drama series that is an adaptation of a novel, I usually prefer to read the novel before catching the movie or series. After reading the story, I might or might not watch its film adaption. When I came across the news that Disclaimer by Renée Knight has been made into a series by Apple TV and Cate Blanchett takes the role of the main character, I had to get a copy of the book. I read it one weekend. It is a page turner.
In Disclaimer by Renée Knight, Mrs Catherine Ravenscroft, award-winning and celebrated documentary film maker is married to Robert, who is a lawyer and they have a son. Catherine has a dark secret that she had not told anyone. Nicholas, their son works as a vacuum-cleaner salesman and both she and her son receive a copy each of the book ‘The Perfect Stranger‘. Several pages into the book, she becomes on edge as it is more sinister than just a work of fiction. The key character’s story is definitely hers to tell if she could bring herself to tell it at all. It is an incident that she has spent years trying to forget and heal from it as the other person who bore witness and knows what actually happened is dead. It is now 2013. The incident happened in Summer 1993 when the Ravenscrofts had gone on holiday with their young son to Spain. As it happened Robert had to fly home due to work, Catherine was left to her own devices. That was when something terrible happened and she wants to forget about the incident. She has thought the matter should be laid to rest.
Catherine knows that someone has published the book with a vengeance to punish her. But who did that? How did the book appear on her bedside shelf?
‘She has no memory of buying it. It just seemed to appear on the pile of books by her bed. But then everything has been so chaotic with the move. Boxes and boxes full of books still waiting to be unpacked. Perhaps she put it there herself. Took it from a box. Attracted to the cover. It could be Robert’s.He has countless books she has never read and might not recognise. Books from years ago.She pictures him trawling through Amazon, taking a fancy to the title, to the cover, and ordering it online. A fluke then. A sick coincidence.’
Catherine concludes that it is not a coincidence. They are just settling into their new home and it is apparent that someone has entered their house and laid the book there. She is the woman at the heart of the story. The book is self-published by Stephen Brigstocke, widowed and a retired teacher. E.J. Preston is the pen name he uses for the book. The story is told in alternating chapters and in two voices, one in the third person and the other narrative is in Stephen’s voice.
The story tells us that we see what we want to see. It poses the question: How well do you know your children? How strong is your love in a marriage?
Disclaimer by Renée Knightis engaging and thought-provoking.
The Golden Gate ,Amy Chua‘s debut novel is a compelling historical mystery/ thriller that begins with the assassination of a charismatic presidential candidate at the swanky Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California. This is March 1944. Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when Walter Wilkinson is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. Wilkinson is a rich industrialist who has enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left and he could have been targeted by any number of groups. In investigating into the killing of Walter Wilkinson, Sullivan brings up the ghost of another tragedy at the Claremont that happened in one afternoon in January 1930 i.e. more than ten years earlier: a tragic accidental death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she still haunts the Claremont. The tangled threads of the murder case keep leading Sullivan back to Isabella, Cassie and Nicole, the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now grownups. Even their mother, Sadie Bainbridge Stafford, who is of unstable mind is also a suspect. Their grandmother, Mrs Genevieve Bainbridge has prepared a testimonial in connection with her deposition as advised by District Attorney Doogan.
Detective Sullivan is a light-skinned mixed-race (Mexican – American) former army officer who is still reckoning with his past. He is part Mexican, part Nebraskan, and part Jewish on his Mecican side. He can pass as white and has changed his name from Alejo Gutiérrez to Al Sullivan in order to be accepted in American society. Local police have been the muscle who “repatriated” Mexicans after the Crash. Immigration agents didn’t come to his house. It was cops who came and took his dad and brothers away. He is hell-bent on escaping his legacy hence he becomes a cop.
Sullivan is determined to find the truth about the crime and he would not compromise any of his findings under the powerful influence of Bainbridges’ grandmother, nor the political aspirations of Berkeley’s district attorney, nor the interest of China’s First Lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.
During the course of his investigation, he is approached by Isabella Bainbridge Stafford, an aspiring journalist. She informs him that there might be the Chinese angle that he can look at. He is told that Madame Chiang is having an affair with Walter Wilkinson.
In Issy’s words,
“Men find her bewitching. Hypnotic. She speaks perfect English – Southern accent, because she went to school in Georgia. She was Wilkinson’s translator and host in Chungking, and soon they were having secret trysts.”
According to her sources, General Chiang might want him killed. Sullivan dismisses that possibility as that would make Wilkinson ‘out to be pretty reckless for sleeping with the wife of the president of China, who is famous for having his secret police take out his enemies.’
Wilkinson had his first scare earlier that fateful evening and he asked to change his room. According to him, it was a Communist ruffian who took the first shot at him? The shooter then fled. He then moved to another room but why did he return to the earlier room and that was proven to be fatal ? The detective has found his leather- bound pocket calendar that shows all the meetings Wilkinson had since arriving in San Francisco. Apparently he had a ‘midnight meeting’ with someone important enough for him to risk returning to the room where he’d already been shot at.
Sullivan collects all the newspaper and magazine stories about the victim.It looks to the homicide detective that whoever killed Walter Wilkinson hated him from the way he was found dead. He was shot in the skull at no more than two feet away and a small dark green object with Oriental writing etched into it was found deep in his throat along with a flower sticking out of his mouth. He was also stripped half-naked in the room at the hotel.
In Sullivan’s voice,
‘People kill for three things : money, power, and love. Give me a murder, and ninety- nine times out of a hundred, one of those three things will be your motive.’
Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.
In the author’s note, Chua explains how the story was conceptualized and the research materials that she had based her characters on though the events are fictional. An interesting fact was after she left for college, her parents moved to a much nicer house in the Claremont neighbourhood of the Berkey Hills and that house turned out to be Madame Chiang Kai-Shek’s former house ! Madame Chiang lived in the house from 1943-1944.
Amy Chua has certainly conjured an intriguing plot in The Golden Gate that contains twists and turns amidst quite a bit of history about the war, the Gold Rush, the Fur Rush before the gold rush and the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. An engrossing read.
In February 2011, I started a reading blog entitled ‘Coffee Chocolate or Tennis’ with a view to share my musings and thoughts on books that I read. It so happened that Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother, the memoir by Amy Chua was the debate at the time so I was curious. Amy Chua‘s memoir was the book I talked about in my first post. Amy Chua is a prolific writer.
Bookaholic Macchiato 