A convoluted crime yarn disorients but enthralls Nicky Pellegrino.
I'm not convinced that I understood every detail of The Man From Primrose Lane by James Renner (Text, $37). It left me puzzling over lots of aspects of its plot although, interestingly, that didn't seem to detract from my enjoyment. It's one of those novels that starts off as one thing - a crime thriller with a tragic love story at its centre - then becomes something else entirely when you're more than halfway through.
The story is set in Ohio and opens with a gruesome discovery, the body of a local hermit known as the Man from Primrose Lane, who has been shot and all his fingers cut off and destroyed in a kitchen blender. Known for always wearing mittens, the man turns out to have been living under a stolen identity and his death flummoxes local cops.
Four years later crime writer David Neff becomes interested in the unsolved murder. Neff has been a broken man since the suicide of his wife and is unable to produce a follow-up to his debut book, a best-selling true crime story, because of the mood-altering medication he's taking. Nevertheless, he starts to research this intriguing case and discovers an odd personal link - the Man from Primrose Lane was obsessed with a young, red-headed woman who looks very like his own late wife and her twin sister, who was abducted as a little girl and never found.
The novel moves back and forth in time and shifts in point of view in a way that can leave the reader with disorienting literary motion sickness. Things occur that you are certain are significant but have no idea why. The plot doesn't just twist and turn, it ricochets. There is mystery after mystery and, like Neff, you struggle to piece it all together. The result does have its flaws but I can't fault it as far as creepiness and suspense goes.
