For some reason, I’d stopped reading Lisa Scottoline. As I recall, the last one I read seemed formulaic and just didn’t grab me. But, when I read about After Anna, a standalone “domestic thriller,” I was looking forward to digging into the copy I received from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley in return for my honest review.
The main characters are Maggie and Noah Alderman and Anna, the daughter Maggie relinquished when she struggled with postpartum psychosis. Maggie had been married to Florian (Anna’s bio dad), but they divorced and he got custody of Anna, then sent her off to boarding school while he made a gazillion dollars developing software. Maggie, who hadn’t seen Anna for nearly 17 years, gets a phone call from the daughter she has mourned for so long, seeking a meeting. She leaps at the chance and leaves her physician husband of two years and his 10-year-old son to go off to meet her daughter.
It turns out that Florian has died in a plane crash, leaving Anna to fend for herself (and also leaving her fifty million dollars). Maggie leaps at the chance to be a mother to the daughter she has never known, and takes her home to join the family. Surprise, Noah!!! Before long, Anna has turned the household upside down, Maggie kicks Noah out, and the next thing you know, Anna turns up dead on Noah’s front porch.
The book includes Noah’s trial and the aftermath, and is told in alternating points of view between Noah and Maggie, so there are really two stories going on, but it is also two stories told out of chronological order, with Noah’s unspooling in reverse order. It sounds weird, but is well done.
I don’t know if Scottoline’s books have been made into movies, but the last quarter of this one reads as if it might have been designed for the screen. Overall, it is an extremely entertaining read, with excellent characterization (especially the high school aspect) and unexpected plot twists. Well, at least to me, but I am the world’s worst at seeing the clues in mysteries/thrillers. I didn’t see this one for a LOOOONG time (although I did wonder when the trial was over and I was less than ¾ through the book.
Four enthusiastic stars.