From the author of The Woman in the Window, a novel about a woman (and mystery fan) who has been summoned to the stately San Francisco mansion of a dying writer who wants her to write his biography and help him figure out what happened to his wife and adolescent son, both of whom vanished 20 years earlier.
This may sound like standard-issue stuff, but beyond that framework, Finn has crafted a book that is fresh, intelligent and—best of all—delightfully witty. Joining in the narration, along with writer Nicky, is Madeleine Trapp, the dying author’s middle-aged daughter, whose wry takes on happenings in the house can make us laugh even as darkness is looming. Madeleine has a unique voice, but so does every character in End of Story, as readable for its word play, literary references and commentary on detective fiction as for its plot. Don’t be lulled into thinking End of Story is one of those cute “'cozy' mysteries, though. When one character is warned, “you’re not scared enough,” that’s actually a warning to us, the readers, as well. Blindsides abound, as Finn traps us in a maze that seems entirely built of dead ends. When the truth finally emerges, there’s only one possible response; Whew. I didn’t see that coming.
If you're up for being kept in the dark, one of the early pleasures of End of Story is not knowing precisely what sort of book it is. It's set in the present but if Charlotte Brontë had a laptop and access to social media, you could imagine her crafting End of Story, which begins in the Gothic territory of her Jane Eyre ... Eventually, there's also a murder. It takes about 200 pages to get there and that feels too long. Finn ratcheted up the tension immediately in Woman in the Window, in which an unreliable narrator witnessed evildoing at the beginning of the book, but End spends a lot of time on scenery-setting. That's tricky, since it's difficult to invest in the disappearance of two characters who were gone well before the book begins ... Luckily, Finn is an assured, witty writer with a gift for entertaining description and sharp instincts about how many references to other mysteries he can get away with ... It could be dangerous to name-drop Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and others. Those legends raise expectations and plenty of writers since them have invented compelling situations that they couldn't figure out how to resolve. Finn, however, knows what he's doing. The way he wraps up End of Story is so satisfying that it fits comfortably in that august company.
