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TITLE: Dear Daughter
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Little
GENRE: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
PUBLISHED: July 31, 2014
RATING: ★★★★ 1/2
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon.com
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Description: Former “It Girl” Janie Jenkins is sly, stunning, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a high-society beauty known for her good works and rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie makes herself over and goes undercover, determined to chase down the one lead she has on her mother’s killer. The only problem? Janie doesn’t know if she’s the killer she’s looking for.
Janie makes her way to an isolated South Dakota town whose mysteries rival her own. Enlisting the help of some new friends (and the town’s wary police chief), Janie follows a series of clues—an old photograph, an abandoned house, a forgotten diary—and begins to piece together her mother’s seemingly improbable connection to the town. When new evidence from Janie’s own past surfaces, she’s forced to consider the possibility that she and her mother were more alike than either of them would ever have imagined.
As she digs tantalizingly deeper, and as suspicious locals begin to see through her increasingly fragile facade, Janie discovers that even the sleepiest towns hide sinister secrets—and will stop at nothing to guard them. On the run from the press, the police, and maybe even a murderer, Janie must choose between the anonymity she craves and the truth she so desperately needs.
A gripping, electrifying debut novel with an ingenious and like-it-or-not sexy protagonist, Dear Daughter follows every twist and turn as Janie unravels the mystery of what happened the night her mother died—whatever the cost.
Review: Oh, I just loved this novel. And it seems author Tana French loves it too...
"This is an all-nighter . . . The best debut mystery I've read in a long time."— Tana French
French's comment is unsurprising because Dear Daughter is a compelling read. But I also imagine French liked the novel because she recognizes a bit of her own style in Dear Daughter. The latest trend in literary reviews seems to be describing a new work as a combination of other novels. Therefore, keeping intact the theme of Janie's former hard partying, high dollar, socialite lifestyle, I have decided to describe Dear Daughter as a cocktail. Its recipe:
- * Mix equal parts Tana French and Chevy Stevens
* Add a shot of any tabloid rag, such as People Magazine or Us Weekly
* Add a twist of any popular young adult author with smart-mouthed, likable, witty female protagonists, (example: John Green)
Dear Daughter is a difficult novel to categorize. Not exactly literary fiction, not quite a typical mystery thriller, not really women's fiction, perhaps a little bit of young adult - and yet it has all of these aspects in one very entertaining story. This novel is just plain fun, a guilty pleasure of sorts. I couldn't put it down! It is an easy read, but it's not for dummies either. It contains many references to music, art, fine dining, culture, foreign locales, foreign language phrases, etc.
Readers are first introduced to Janie as she is released from prison; now, for the first time in ten years, Janie is free and on her own. Her only friend and confidante for all those lonely years was her lawyer, Noah. She tells him she is going to one location but goes to another. She has her own agenda: to learn her mother's secret past and find out who killed her mother and why. She thinks she is not her mother's murderer but she is not sure.. Alone in a hotel Janie realizes...
Now my folie à deux had become a folie à une. I pressed a hand to my solar plexus.
Understand that this is how it works with people like me. Self-pity is the sun around which we orbit, the great gravitational force that rules those of us for whom Things Didn't Quite Turn Out. If we're lucky, purpose (vengeance, absolution, cookies, not in that order) can keep us from falling in, from burning up, but we're fooling ourselves if we ever think we're going to break free. But that’s why God created Xanax. I slipped half a tab under my tongue and headed for the door. I had a train to catch.
Author Little alternates Janie's first person narrative with newspaper and magazine clippings rehashing the scandalously violent murder of Janie's mother and speculating on Janie's current whereabouts. This adds a different perspective and makes the story more interesting, often adding information not previously known, or confirming Janie's account. This technique was used with great skill in another novel I highly recommend, Night Film by Marisha Pessl.
The Lady Vanishes
CELEBRITY NEWS
November 2, 2013 at 3:05 PM
By Us Weekly Staff
In the weeks since notorious accused murderer Janie Jenkins’s release, one question has been on everyone’s minds: Just where in the world has she gone? Sightings and tips have been pouring in to online gossip sites, and cable news networks are reporting new developments practically by the minute. But the leads are proving as elusive as Jenkins herself.
Speculation of late has centered on the exclusive Hawaiian island of Lanai, as several sources close to the case have hinted that Jenkins has traveled to her late mother’s secluded villa there. But despite the legions of paparazzi that have descended on the remote island, no one has been able to uncover any sign of Jenkins.
At least not yet.
Jenkins, now 26, was convicted in 2003 of the brutal murder of her mother, Marion Elsinger (née Jenkins), the enigmatic ex-wife of a number of prominent European businessmen, most recently Jakob Elsinger of Zurich. Elsinger was discovered the morning of July 15, 2003, when police were called to the Elsinger house by Janie, who reported the crime with what the emergency responder later called an “eerie calm.” When the police arrived they were shocked not only by the physical trauma that had been inflicted on Elsinger’s body but also at what appeared to be a brazen attempt on Janie’s part to destroy key forensic evidence.
Although it’s clear that the DNA evidence in Jenkins’s case was indeed mishandled by the Los Angeles County Crime Lab, it seems that most Americans still believe Jenkins is guilty. While there are those who have cautioned against vigilantism, others, such as Trace Kessler of the crime blog “Without a Trace,” have embraced it. Kessler has been particularly pro-active in his pursuit of Jenkins, even going so far as to offer a reward to anyone with information that might point to Janie’s location.
In the end, whatever the information or misinformation might be, one thing is clear: Guilty or not, wherever Janie Jenkins plans to go, she has a treacherous road ahead of her.
Sadly, there are some glaringly large holes in the plot that interfere with my enjoyment of the book. The most obvious one is that if Janie were really as famous as Paris Hilton, there is no way that merely dyeing her hair and putting on some glasses would disguise her for more than a few hours. Even in a small town, someone with her notoriety would be about as easy to spot as a 6 ft tall transsexual wearing a thong. You see, our Janie appears in a tiny town in South Dakota where her mother grew up, discovers relatives she didn't know she had, and tries, apparently successfully, to "blend in". Meanwhile, a true crime blogger, Trace Kessler (I pictured him looking like Perez Hilton!), is hot on her tail, and of course he shows up on the scene as well. All sorts of ridiculous tricky-to-follow mayhem ensues, but again, take a deep breath and keep reading. What saves Dear Daughter from deteriorating into eye-rolling disbelief, really, is the author's writing skill, and Janie's own voice which speaks directly to us. A particularly memorable quote from Janie here, as she remembers the night of her mother's death:
Everyone always asks what my first thought was, when I found her. But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t have any thoughts at all until much later. I was mixed up before I even opened my eyes, still reeling from the previous night’s dire combination of blended whiskey, prescription painkillers, and agonizingly fatuous conversation. And anyway, thought was beside the point—when I walked into my mother’s room part of me already knew. Whether that was because I sensed that something was wrong or because I myself had already done that wrong something, well: that’s the 16.5-million-dollar question.
Then, before I realized what I was doing, I was down on the floor with my face next to what was left of hers, shouting in one bloodied ear while scooping up tissue and viscera and bone, trying to spackle her over like she was a bucket and I was Dear Liza. Of course, by that point it wasn’t of any use.
This was the last time I saw her. If only they’d let me come to the morgue—the neat stitches of a pathologist would have been a welcome relief—but I wasn’t allowed the privilege, such as it was. So instead my retinas are forever burned with the image of a stranger, a woman whose curated beauty had been splattered across a room. It was hardly even a body; it was a spill.
I wish I’d been able to look away, but just then sight was the kindest of my senses, a hug and a hot toddy compared to the stench, the swamp, the silence. I found myself mesmerized by all the parts of her she’d tried never to let anyone see: a beige blotch of sun damage on her décolletage, a purple-veined calf. I hadn’t known that her lip liner was tattooed on or that she had a bald patch in the middle of her left eyebrow. One of her implants had collapsed, punctured by a bullet. For a second I could see what she had looked like before, when I was little, before the surgeries and injectables and miracle creams made from monkey come.
She had never been more dear to me than she was in that moment.
Many readers and reviewers are disappointed with the novel's ending. After reflection, it seems to me that it ended realistically and things are precisely as they should be. And it leaves me wondering what happened to Janie - will there be a sequel? I hope to hear from Janie again. I award Dear Daughter 4.5 glittering stars, with points knocked off only due to Janie's poor attempts at disguise.
