Perfect Daughter by Ion Esimai

This is a story of vengeance, along with greed and some justice. Maybe some readers might see redemption. I didn’t. Full justice is not served. The book starts out with incredible potential and the storyline is good. Unfortunately, the presentation falls short.

Miriam Cassidy goes to her mother’s house for their usual Tuesday lunch. Their relationship is precarious at best. She finds her mother dead in the bathtub. An apparent suicide. The story is told from two points of view. Miriam’s is first person. The potential for an unreliable narrator is there. I love a good unreliable narrator. Unfortunately, this one fails to impress.

The second point of view is Detective Rourke who takes the case of Elaine Cassidy’s death. His point of view is third person limited.

The story starts to fall apart once Rourke gets involved and we start seeing things from his point of view. There is way too much repetition in this book. Repeatedly the crime is rehashed. Both by Miriam and Rourke. The book is full of inconsistencies. For example, the time of death changes at least four times. There is one time of death that makes the entire story believable, but that one is only mentioned once. And finally, there are so many inaccuracies. Even though I am a crime fiction writer, I’m not overly concerned about every little detail, as long as they are believable. However, the numerous and constant inaccuracies in this story pulled me out and irritated me. One minor example is that New Jersey is a grand jury state. Every felony goes through the grand jury. Not in this story. This is just one inaccuracy around the legal proceedings.

My final issue with this book is that most of the story is told. It’s subtitled as a “Haunting psychological thriller.” But it’s not a thriller because everything that happens, already happened. After chapter 1, the reader learns about everything through dialog or thoughts of the point-of-view character. There is a mystery. And like I led with, the storyline has good potential. Unfortunately, the “telling” of the story lacks substance and engagement.

It is a fairly clean book Just some mild profanity. No on page sex. And no violence. It’s the first book of the year, therefore ranked number one. I don’t expect it to remain there long.

1. Perfect Daughter by Ion Esimai

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