A noirish thriller about mistaken identity set in the roaring 20s lacks the necessary tension and subtlety to be a success
Baz Lurhmann's version of The Great Gatsby has a lot to answer for. Not only have the reviews been poor, the resultant fascination with all things roaring 20s is proving equally disappointing. Rindell's debut novel is a case in point. The list of ingredients dazzles, but the cocktail ultimately created is bland and badly mixed.
It is New York City during prohibition. Rose Baker is a stenographer in a police precinct on the Lower East Side, lured from the dull grind of her daily life by the charismatic new typist, Odalie. Scratch her bejeweled, silk-draped surface however, and Odalie isn't the innocent, upstanding citizen she claims to be, and Rose soon finds herself trapped in a nightmare of mistaken identity.
Told in Rose's voice as something verging on a confession after the fact, the prose is full of cliché and hyperbole – "She was the dark epicentre of something we didn't quite understand yes, the place where hot and cold mixed dangerously, and around her everything would change" – and the fallback description is "modern", from the cut of dresses to Odalie's lifestyle. Rose is too priggish to be a likable heroine, but given that the entire plot hinges on the inevitable collision course between her and Odalie, most problematic of all is her near-unexplained fascination with her new colleague, not to mention the fact that Odalie's supposed "magnetism" never quite convinces either. Something of a Single White Female for the jazz age, the echoes of The Talented Mr Ripley and Vertigo are there, but overall Rindell's narrative lacks the necessary subtlety and tension for a stylish noirish thriller.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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