This was my other Amazon First Reads book that I selected this month... which Brooke totally predicted I was going to pick.

Anyway, the synopsis:



The book starts off with the postcard arriving right away, while Harry is in the middle of trying to pass consequential legislation and is being contemplated for the VP slot on the next presidential ticket. Krista is his dedicated chief of staff who has been with him since the very beginning, and repeatedly talks about how she believes he's destined for greatness and how their fates are inextricably tied together. Gee, I wonder if that's going to come into play later?

More postcards arrive and Harry is cagey about them. A reporter asks about Harry's connection to Cedar Lake, a lake near where Harry grew up (and what was featured on the postcards)... so there's obviously something going on that Krista needs to find out about. And like any good chief of staff to one of the most high profile congressmen in the country, she naturally decides that she needs to drop everything, leave her job behind, and investigate this matter personally. Instead of, you know, hiring a private investigator or an attorney or something.


Fast forward through several chapters that jump back and forth between Krista investigating the events of the past, and those events of the past happening in real time. Which the author doesn't do a great job of, because he often communicated information in the flashback chapters that provided more information to the reader than what the characters (Krista) have... so then the reader has to endure a bunch of chapters where Krista discovers a bombshell piece of information that was already known to the reader. So, yeah, if you're going to have a narrative that jumps back and forth, make sure you pay attention to what information is presented when.

Long story short, Harry and his three buddies were staying at a cabin on Cedar Lake one summer, and they decide to check out Pike Island which has an abandoned house on it and not much else. Turns out the house wasn't really so abandoned after all; it's actually a meth lab. The boys find money there, take a small bit of it (like $500) for beer and pizza, and move on with their lives... until two armed men break into their cabin and interrogate them over the missing money. Turns out that they're actually missing $100,000 and they realize that these meth cooks are involved with the local park ranger service that patrols the lake. The boys swear they don't know anything about the missing money and are taken back to the island for further interrogation.

As it turns out, Harry did take the $100,000 (he came back after the other guys went to bed one night). And when the boys turn the tables on their kidnappers, Harry intentionally shoots one of them after the guy had surrendered, then locks the other two in the house before setting a fire that causes the meth lab to explode. Harry, as it turns out, is a bit of a sociopath; he wanted the money to fund his higher education, and he of course couldn't leave any loose ends. Jake is the only one of the friends who knows this part of the story, and he's the one who, years later after the guilt has been gnawing at him, started sending the postcards to Harry to let him know what he did wasn't okay.

When Krista goes to investigate all this, she discovers that Jake actually kept the gun Harry used to kill the meth cook this entire time. It's the one piece of evidence that proves the meth lab explosion wasn't an accident and that Harry is a murderer. So, of course, Jake apparently decides that rather than just, you know, turning that evidence into the police, he should engage in a cat-and-mouse game of sending cryptic postcards to the killer and hoping it'll rattle him enough to... make him turn himself in?

In the finale, Krista goes to visit Jake to get the whole story and then retrieve the gun. Harry shows up, presumably to kill Jake, but Jake gets the drop on him and threatens to shoot Harry, reasoning that he's a stone-cold killer and can't be left alive to keep doing bad things (or something like that). Krista coaxes the gun away from him with promises that they'll turn the evidence in to the authorities and Harry's career will be over... but then shoots Jake in the head the minute he hands her the gun. Because their political/career fates are so inextricably linked! And she sees how much good he can do for the country, maybe as President one day, as long as they keep covering up all the murders and whatnot (some now more recent than others!).

The books ends with a flash forward a few years later, with Harry the likely next governor of the state. Krista has Jake's full confession on a digital recorder hidden in her room, presumably to use against Harry if he ever steps out of line. So I guess the moral of the story is that as long as you're a powerful person, it's okay to murder people and do all kinds of other heinous stuff, because the potential for good that you have outweighs all of your past sins. Seriously, that's the message of the book.

It was a quick read, I'll give the author that. But beyond that, it was a pretty tepid thriller with a twist at the end you could see coming a mile away.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 7:20pm • Submit your own review...