The Last Thing I Told You

May 28, 2018
The bludgeoning murder of therapist Mark Fabian in Campion, Conn., drives this tense-if-flawed blend of police procedural and psychological drama from Arsenault (The Evening Spider). Det. Henry Peacher’s investigation hinges on Fabian’s cryptic notes and two old patient files he pulled just before his death—in particular, that of Nadine Raines, who stabbed a teacher with a box cutter when she and Henry were in high school together in Campion. Years later, Nadine has returned to the small town to visit Fabian. Indeed, she’s present at the crime scene, which she later flees, but is she the killer? Nadine is a richly imagined character, and her notes made as a teenager and internal monologues retrospectively addressing her unresolved issues about adult men feel creepily authentic. But Henry’s pursuit of the explanation for Fabian’s death—and eventually of Nadine—is unevenly paced, plodding at first but too fast as the pieces fall together into an unsatisfying twist ending. Hopefully, Arsenault will return to form next time. Agent: Laura Langlie, Laura Langlie Agency.

May 15, 2018
A woman who committed a violent act as a teenager returns to her New England hometown--and her former psychiatrist is murdered.In Arsenault's (The Leaf Reader, 2017, etc.) novel, it's been almost 20 years since Nadine Raines left town after finishing her high school equivalency degree, but something beyond a holiday visit to her mom and stepfather has brought her back. Could it be the desire to harm her former psychotherapist, Mark Fabian? After all, when Nadine was in high school, she attacked a teacher and then spent several years in therapy with Fabian, whom she nicknamed "Bouffant," before leaving for college and a nursing career. Sgt. Henry Peacher remembers Nadine from high school; he stayed in Campion and, after a brutal rampage at a local nursing home a few years ago, has earned a reputation as Campion's hero cop. So when he finds a copy of her old file in Fabian's office, as well as a copy of the nursing home shooter's file, he wonders if there is a connection between these isolated incidents of violence. The novel alternates between Henry's point of view and Nadine's, with most of Nadine's internal monologue addressed directly to (dead) Fabian. Meanwhile, Henry fights to discover some dark truths about the town of Campion and its seemingly upstanding citizens, truths that they might kill to conceal. There's very little about the novel that truly thrills or that feels original, except maybe the forthright Henry Peacher, who is not a hero but is all the more human for it. Nadine remains shadowy throughout, and Fabian, in the end, doesn't seem to have been a particularly effective therapist--or a particularly intriguing victim.A few interesting character intersections but, overall, a fairly derivative thriller.

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May 1, 2018
In her latest thriller, Arsenault (The Evening Spider, 2016) examines what happens after a mass shooting is forgotten by the media, but that's just one of many layers in a thought-provoking story. The tale starts with the murder of psychologist Mark Fabian, but readers come to find out that his death was actually the culmination of years of turmoil surrounding a massacre at a Massachusetts nursing home. As Arsenault invites readers into the small-town setting, she introduces two characters who were previously Fabian's patients, as well as the detective, Henry Peacher, investigating the therapist's murder; Peacher was also the first officer on the scene of the mass shooting. The multiple, intertwined points of view cleverly reveal how a horrific crime isn't a day in the making, nor is it quick to recover from, and the story will leave readers looking anew at events they thought they had figured out. Readers who enjoy a police procedural with a sturdy lawmaker at the helm are the audience for this slow-burning but thoroughly satisfying mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)