Book Review by Robert Wiersema End of Story by A.J. Finn When it was published earlier this year, End of Story – the new thriller by A.J. Finn – came as something of a surprise. Finn’s first novel, The Woman in the Window, was a sweeping success. An instant bestseller, it sold millions of copies, was adapted to film and even inspired a parody (Netflix’s The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. Despite this success, though, Finn’s career seemed to come to a shuddering halt in 2019 with the publication of an exposé in the New Yorker which revealed Finn – the pen name for long-time editor Dan Mallory – to be a serial fabricator (his lies included, but were not limited to his background, his education, his struggle with cancer and the heartbreaking deaths of his mother and brother). Any talk of a followup novel to The Woman in the Window – the second book in his $2 million contract – which was scheduled for release in 2020, seemed to evaporate and Finn largely disappeared from the public eye, save for his frequent recommendations (blurbs) for other writers. End of Story, that long-vaunted second novel, appeared in February. The novel begins with a brief scene of a body being discovered in the courtyard of a San Francisco mansion, floating in “the pond, that perfect circle sunk near the wall of the house, with its glowing fish, its lily pads like stars.” The book immediately flashes back to six days earlier, with Nicky Hunter’s arrival in San Francisco. It’s 2019, and Hunter – an expert in mystery fiction – has been invited to the city by the bay by legendary mystery writer Sebastian Trapp. The writer, who has been given mere months to live, has invited Hunter to co-write his memoir. This won’t be a standard literary memoir, though – Trapp himself is embroiled in a mystery. Twenty years earlier, his wife and son disappeared after a New Year’s party. Although they weren’t together when they disappeared, everyone naturally assumed that the vanishings were linked. More than that: with no trace of either of them ever found, it is assumed that both mother and son are dead and that Trapp himself may be responsible. A mystery writer crafting the perfect murder, times two? Trapp, however, has always denied any involvement and, as part of their work together, he suggests to Hunter, “You and I might even solve an old mystery or two while we’re at it.” This sets the stage for a slow-burn compelling mystery-thriller that will satisfy readers of the classics of the genre. Hunter moves into Trapp’s mansion and quickly becomes embroiled in the complicated family dynamics. When a murder is committed in the house (well, the courtyard – it’s the body that was discovered in the novel’s introduction), the stakes suddenly become personal for Hunter and the novel’s central questions shift: which mysteries will Hunter be solving? Did Trapp get away with murder once? Twice? Will he get away with it again? Drawing on San Francisco’s hills and chills and fog to create a potent gothic atmosphere and filling the novel with references to classics of detective fiction, including Agatha Christie and Dashiel Hammet, End of Story weaves a tight fictional spell. While the story can occasionally seem to lag and the characters can be a bit confusing, the book quickly becomes compulsive and Finn, true to form, has a couple of tricks and twists up his sleeve. CSANews | SPRING 2024 | 39
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