What you don’t say might kill you: Hush by Kate White

This book has a great premise. Lake Warren has a one-night-stand with an attractive doctor working at the NYC fertility clinic where she is a PR consultant. After a nap on his terrace she comes back into the bedroom to find he’s been murdered. She doesn’t call the police because her estranged husband is demanding full custody of her children and were she to become a suspect in a murder investigation, it would provide him with the ammunition he needs to take the kids away. Panicking, Lake rushes out into the night:

Rubbing her forehead, she tried desperately to think. What she needed to do, she decided, was to just get home. She would be safe there and could decide how to handle things once she had a clear head. After checking once more behind her, she hurried down the street and swung right onto Spring Street. There would be cabs on Broadway. But then she stopped in her tracks. Once Keaton’s body was discovered, the police would surely interview everyone they could find who’d been in this area. And like she’d seen on TV crime shows, wouldn’t they also go to cab companies to see what fares had been picked up around this time of night in SoHo? A cabbie might easily recall her: a woman all alone, dressed in a trench coat. The police would find out who from the clinic had been at the dinner and put two and two together.

So she had to take the subway instead – and buy a MetroCard with cash.

There was a station for the C line at Sixth Avenue and Spring, she remembered, and that would take her to Eighty-sixth and Central Park West. But subway stations had cameras. What if the cops watched the tapes to see who’d entered any station within a certain radius? She ducked into the dark doorway of a building to calm herself. She felt short of breath, like she was being smothered. Calm down, she told herself. The best thing to do, she realized, was to walk – for blocks and blocks. And finally, when she was far enough away, she would find a taxi.

Lake starts her own investigation into the murder and soon begins to suspect that the clinic has its own dark secrets.I loved the way the tension built as Lake has to go to work at the clinic the day after the murder and try to act normally while she waits for the body to be discovered. I enjoyed the New York setting and I liked the way that the theme of parenthood related both to Lake’s personal life and to the mystery she has to solve. But it felt just like that – a mystery, with not enough meat for a thriller. The sinister goings-on at the clinic were very intriguing but ultimately turned into a damp squib. After compulsively reading through most of the book, the denouement came as a disappointment to me and the last few pages consisted of recapping and wrapping up various promising story strands with a line or two. I love Kate White’s Bailey Weggins mysteries, but this ‘stand-alone thriller’, released in hardback and beautifully packaged, felt slightly oversold – less satisfying and less well constructed than a Bailey book.

I sympathised with Lake, who is a very different character to Bailey – much less confident and feisty. Unlike the Bailey books, this novel is written in the third person – possibly in an attempt to shed any ‘chicklit’ connotations – but White doesn’t seem as comfortable with this form of narrative. She never takes the opportunity to shift point of view – the whole book is seen through Lake’s eyes.A great book to throw in your valise for a weekend away, but it left me hoping Bailey hasn’t hung up her slingbacks just yet.

UPDATE: May 2010 – revisited this and despite a slightly disappointing wind-up, it’s a great read, even when you know the answers!

Kate White’s website

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Tags: bailey weggins, hush, kate white