Pandemic Murder Mystery: Book Review of Cate Holahan's The Darkness of Others

 

The Darkness of Others by Cate Holahan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and GoodReads for providing a review copy of Cate Holahan’s The Darkness of Others in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Darkness of Others is a murder mystery told from multiple points-of-view, but the main view points come from three women: Melissa, whose husband has been shot dead and she is now being held captive by his murderer; Tonya, a single mother who finds herself homeless and jobless in the middle of the pandemic; and Imani, a therapist married to a restaurateur and who is best friends with the missing widow. Of the three women, Imani owns the story. She is the only one who can save her best friend and solve the mystery—the cops consider the mystery solved, believing Melissa murdered her husband and is now in hiding from the authorities. Only Imani knows better, believing her friend would never willingly abandon her daughter.

In addition to Imani dealing with the loss of her best friend’s husband and the worry for her best friend's safety, she learns that her husband has borrowed against their house in order to stay in business and then he offers an employee their guest room, as she and her daughter have been evicted from their apartment. Enter Tonya, having to uncomfortably live off of the kindness of strangers.

As the story unfolds and secrets are revealed, one betrayal leads to another and the connections between the women might be the only thing that saves them.

The early pandemic lends a backdrop of fear: a time when we knew masks and social distancing could help keep people safe, and so we created our small, social pods. Those with health problems or “underlying conditions” as we were taught to call them, had to look out for themselves. It was not clear who would follow the rules and who would not and mask etiquette was also in question. Strangers feared each other as possible carriers of the virus.

Added to that background of fear is the unsolved murder and the missing woman, plus the mistrust of police officers. Imani must care for her home, her children, and her job. She is the one who supports other stressed out mothers through telehealth. In this way, the book is a kind of recording of mothers’ struggles during pandemic.

In fact, the entire book can be seen as a study of women’s relationships and the vulnerability that surrounds them. The ways in which women fear and distrust each other and the ways in which women can boost each other up. Also, stinky men.

Would I teach The Darkness of Others? I can see a place for teaching this book as an examination of how to incorporate recent history into books or how to create a thematic conversation with a murder mystery plot. The book becomes a bit problematic in the denouement, after all has been revealed, in matching up the ending with the clues that have been dropped throughout. The imperfections in the wrapping up of the book are a good learning opportunity for writers.

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