Book Review: 'Fool Her Once' By Joanna Elm

“Fool Her Once,” a psychological thriller by former investigative reporter, journalist and lawyer Joanna Elm, takes twist-and-turn to a dizzying level, as characters continually reveal new aspects of themselves or are found to be hiding facts about their past. The reader is constantly readjusting sentiment, perspective, relationships. Throughout, however, as menace mounts, and the timetable keeps shifting from present to past and back and forth again (a device that sometimes becomes too insistent), Elm maintains an intriguing ambivalent attitude toward her major players, especially her protagonist Jenna Sinclair, an attractive, hard-driving, self-assured, truth-seeking reporter who has just had published in CityMagazine an exposé of farm-to-table food fraud at upscale Hamptons eateries.

In an author’s note, Elm, who lives in Hampton Bays, writes that “to a certain extent” Jenna Sinclair is based on herself, in style. “When [Jenna’a] husband observes that “he could hear her circling back, zeroing in on the tricky question in that way she had of making everything sound like an interrogation,” Elm acknowledges she does the same, even “in non-professional settings.” This is a unusual admission, given that her protagonist does not always come across as a sympathetic character, though for sure the reader trusts her smarts.

So who is the guy idling in a car as the novel opens, waiting for her to show up at her Manhattan apartment, someone who doesn’t want “any witnesses” when he confronts her? It’s night, he’s unobserved. Switch to Jenna about to have dinner at a pricey Manhattan restaurant with her magazine’s editor, Ryan McAllister, a former lover whom she still has the hots for, though she’s been married to Zack King for 16 years. Zack owns the successful inn they run together on the North Fork of Long Island. They get on all right, but have a troubled teenage daughter who’s just been asked to leave her camp in Maine for disruptive behavior. Also, Jenna has recently discovered her devoted and square-shooting husband’s quickie affair with an intern he hired, and is furious. Maybe that’s why she winds up taking Ryan, now also married, to bed after dinner, both of them drunk. The guy in the car is outside, waiting.

Switch to the next morning when Ryan’s found, near Jenna’s apartment, savagely beaten, almost dead. Who would do this? A disgruntled restaurant owner or — the only one she can think of — someone from her past. That would be Denny Dennison, who may be out for revenge for a story she did years earlier as a rookie reporter for a tabloid scandal sheet about a serial rapist and killer who wound up fathering a child — Denny — before the killer was executed. Jenna had been able to interview the serial killer’s mother who told her more than she should have. A sensation-seeking headline writer referred to Denny as the “spawn,” and the article made his life and the life of his pregnant wife and mother hell.

Were he still alive, Jenna wonders, might he have inherited pathological genes and come for her, finally, or her daughter, or her colleagues? She feels terrible about the “spawn” article and is determined to find out what happened to Denny. Meanwhile, the police suspect Zack as Ryan’s attacker because, well, he knew about and hated his wife’s eternal passion. As the case is investigated, an older local police officer with mixed motives befriends Jenna and Zack (“Hi kids”), giving them advance information about the inquiry. But soon the inquiry widens — the body of the pretty intern who worked for them washes up on the shore of Robin’s Island.

“Fool Her Once” is timely in exploring the theme of nature vs. nurture in forming personality and behavior, especially in the context of pathology and crime. Are there “bad seeds”? Elm is banking on readers being curious about recent research in this field, and pro enough to raise suspicion but conclude nothing. She also knows how to sustain suspense once it’s apparent who the killer is — from who it is to will he be caught before he kills Jenna.

“Fool Her Once” does go over the top in some ways — chance discoveries and physical altercations, but it will likely prove a good diversion in our trying times. What also recommends it is its setting, the North Fork from Cutchogue to Orient to Robins Island and the waterways in between. It’s obvious the author knows the area well, and loves it.

The release date of “Fool Her Once,” published by CamCat Books, is March 1.