North of Boston
Elisabeth Elo
Pamela Dorman Books
Fiction, Mystery/Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: As the adult child of a turbulent marriage, Pirio Kasparov has struggled but built a reasonably decent life for herself in Boston. The perfume company founded by her parents is doing well, and will someday pass to her if her stubborn Russian-born father ever relinquishes his control. Her best friend since boarding school days, Thomasina, isn't doing nearly so well, too frequently found at the bottom of a bottle, but Pirio does what she can to help her and her son Noah. Ned, Thomasina's ex and Noah's father, had just left a large commercial outfit for the freelance life aboard a lobster boat, with Pirio riding along to help bait traps and get him started (not that she has a particular interest in fishing, but she's always on the lookout for something new and interesting to try, and for all his faults Ned has been a great father).
Neither one saw the freighter until it was slicing Ned's small vessel in two.
While Ned was lost, Pirio managed to survive for four hours in the near-freezing waters north of Boston before being rescued. The news treats her as a novelty, while the Navy wants to investigate her unusual ability to endure extreme water temperatures. But Pirio can hardly care about those things, not with Noah's father dead - and not with that little itch in the back of her mind that the "accident" was anything but accidental. Disappointed by official investigations that seem content to brush the matter aside and spurred by her cynical and suspicious father, she starts poking around on her own. Little does she suspect what a hornet's nest her inquiries will kick up...
REVIEW: This debut thriller melds elements of commercial fishing, corruption, perfume making, immigrant diaspora, and the lasting scars of troubled childhoods and abusive relationships, set in a solidly realized Boston and starring an interesting, proactive, and somewhat flawed heroine. It also feels like the start of a series that never took off, and thus one that never got a chance to fully explore its characters or situations, making some parts feel oddly extraneous by the end.
Keeping a fairly good pace throughout, Pirio's incredible survival in frigid Atlantic waters gives her some local notoriety in the middle of a deeply personal tragedy; Ned and her school friend Thomasina may have been over as a couple, but the man always did right by his son Noah, also much beloved by Pirio, and the breakup was not exactly a one-sided matter. That notoriety gets her noticed by the Navy (a subplot that sorta sputters out after verifying something Pirio suspected but needed proof of before believing), and also gives her some "street cred" when she starts investigating the matter of who sank Ned's boat. At first, she thinks it's a tragic accident, maybe a "hit and run" as is not uncommon on a sea with many small vessels sharing space and shipping lanes with behemoths, neither of which can exactly brake on a dime. But when strange occurrences follow her first questions, she realizes that there's more to it than mere happenstance; Ned was targeted, and someone wants very much for the matter to be forgotten. Pirio is reasonably clever in her investigations, if sometimes reckless, though that's in keeping with her character. Along the way, she also has to help with Noah as his mother spirals into self-destruction and cope with her own headstrong father's mortality catching up to his outsized will and personality, one more complication in a relationship that has been nothing but complicated. Memories of her mother, a woman with her own problems but who left an indelible mark on Pirio's life (as well as a legacy of the wondrous complexities of scent; she was the one who started formulating the perfumes that would become the backbone of the family's minor empire), make her fractured family relations all the more bittersweet, though her quest to find justice for Ned helps bring some unexpected closure on that front. Along the way are numerous clues and dangerous characters, some close calls and dead ends, culminating in revelations that have far-reaching implications and put Pirio and her friends in far more danger than she ever intended. There are hints and potentials for romance, but for the most part the book is free of entanglements of the heart; she may feel some attractions, but knows her current quest must take precedence. The conclusion leaves some questions and threads loose in a way that feels intentional, as though Elo was leaving the door open for more stories about Pirio and her companions. Overall, it kept me entertained.
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