{"id":9492,"date":"2022-02-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9492"},"modified":"2022-02-14T15:59:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T20:59:07","slug":"find-her-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9492","title":{"rendered":"Find Her First"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Former newspaper journalist Emma Christie\u2019s second novel, Find Her First<\/em>, could be called a crime thriller, which it is, or a murder mystery, which it also is. Trying to figure out what is really going on in a sea of red herrings is a big part of this book’s enormous pleasures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story takes place in Edinburgh and the surrounding countryside, where Andy Campbell and his wife Stef are dedicated hikers. Scotland\u2019s well-described forests and cliffs and vistas are an essential backdrop to their story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book opens with Andy, apparently on trial for murder, awaiting the verdict. He\u2019s an experienced paramedic, but has he taken a life? Though the contours of his crime are not yet defined, his sadness that events reached this point is clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re left waiting for the court\u2019s judgment, which won\u2019t come for many pages. Instead, the narrative goes back six months to the previous summer. Chapters taking Andy\u2019s point of view alternate with those written by Betty Stevenson, the housecleaner for Andy and his wife Stef, also a paramedic, but on mandatory leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fate and whether it\u2019s possible to escape it or to take it into your own hands is a major theme of the book. Betty is fond of Stef and desperately eager for closeness with someone. She believes in luck\u2014the luck of a shiny penny found on the street\u2014and in fate. Being a friend to Stef, she thinks, is her fate. And now, it seems, Stef is missing. Betty is going to Do Something About It.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Betty and Andy both had traumatic childhoods that shaped their current lives, with Andy determined to save people and Betty, in her own way, trying to recapture the innocence of those much younger days. A few chapters are in Stef\u2019s point of view from a year before the trial. All these time shifts can be a mite confusing, but in the end make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three of the main characters have regrets. Fractured family relationships. A romantic indiscretion. Lies they\u2019ve told. A series of miscarriages. Author Christie spins out a complicated, entangling web and keeps you guessing about where its strands will lead. Are their current challenges related to the past, the present, or the future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She writes with a close-in psychological perspective, and you come to have a rather deep understanding of the principal characters. You know why they act as they do, even when another course might be objectively better. In a sense, it\u2019s an object lesson in the perils of partial information. You have only partial information too, and not until the end do you learn what the story is really about. An excellent read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order here from Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or here from IndieBound<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former newspaper journalist Emma Christie\u2019s second novel, Find Her First, could be called a crime thriller, which it is, or a murder mystery, which it also is. Trying to figure out what is really going on in a sea of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"This fascinating mytery takes a number of unexpected turns. Great read","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,366,74,40,3,126,359],"tags":[1146],"class_list":["post-9492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-drama","category-emotions","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-review","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2t6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9494,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9492\/revisions\/9494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}