The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Title: The Woman in the Library

Author: Sulari Gentill

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Ultimo Press

Published: 1^st June 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 272

Price: $24.99

Synopsis: WINNER OF THE CRIME FICTION LOVER BEST INDIE NOVEL 2022
NOMINEE 2023 EDGAR AWARDS – MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD

‘And then there is a scream. Ragged and terrified. A beat of silence even after it stops, until we all seem to realise that the Reading Room Rules no longer apply.’

Hannah Tigone, bestselling Australian crime author, is crafting a new novel that begins in the Boston Public Library: four strangers; Winifred, Cain, Marigold and Whit are sitting at the same table when a bloodcurdling scream breaks the silence. A woman has been murdered. They are all suspects, and, as it turns out, each character has their own secrets and motivations – and one of them is a murderer.

While crafting this new thriller, Hannah shares each chapter with her biggest fan and aspirational novelist, Leo. But Leo seems to know a lot about violence, motive, and how exactly to kill someone. Perhaps he is not all that he seems…

The Woman in the Library is an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship – and shows that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.

~*~

Hannah Tigone is a best-selling Australian crime author, and she is working on a new novel set in Boston. It starts with four strangers in the Boston Public Library: Winifred, an author who is there on the Sinclair Fellowship, and the three people she is observing. Heroic Chin, Freud Girl, and Handsome Man, whom we soon learn are Whit, Marigold, and Cain. But whilst they’re sitting quietly, a scream penetrates the air, and the quartet become aware that a murder has just occurred – but who killed the woman, and why? Who is she? Winifred is pulled into the world of her new friends in Hannah’s story as they try to find out who killed the woman. All four are suspects – but only one is the murderer. As Hannah writes her novel, she is corresponding with a fan named Leo. He is her biggest fan, and he is reading her book chapter by chapter, providing feedback about how he thinks she should be writing the story, what she should be including and all manner of things that seem as though he has delusions of grandeur, because he is convinced he knows how to write Hannah’s story better than she does, as the correspondence and emails take place on the cusp of the bushfires at the end of 2019 in Australia and the start of the pandemic in 2020. Hannah’s story – which is the bulk of the novel, so it is a story within a story – takes place at the end of 2019, nearer Christmas than the pandemic in comparison.

As Leo reads Hannah’s chapters and he responds, the reader gains an insight into Leo as a person, and the way he comes across. At first, his offer of research like maps, names of locations, and addresses is harmless. He is helping Hannah, who is stuck in Australia due to the world circumstances, do on the ground research. That is, until he starts sending her crime scene photos and information – information that would usually be confined to the investigative teams on the crimes. His later emails reveal that he knows more about violence, motive, and exactly how to kill someone – a very unsettling idea for Hannah as she resists Leo’s demands and attempts to rewrite her book. For me, he was deeply unsettling from the start. He made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I think he was included in relevant was that echoed the uncertainties of how authors are going to respond to events like the pandemic, about how to include it if you set your novel after 2019, or whether you are going to set your novel in a world or time far from the pandemic. As a reader, I think it depends on the book and the story. The way Sulari has dealt with the pandemic is different and unique – a take on it that had never occurred to me.

Hannah’s story acts as the framework, mirroring the crimes that Leo tells her about in his emails and through Winifred, I could sense her growing discomfort with him and how close he felt he was to her – a stalker who would do anything to get to the object of his desire. The mirror mysteries of who is killing in Hannah’s novel and in Leo’s reality show that sometimes life can imitate art and raises the question of how far someone might go to research a novel. The intensity of the emails works to build up the suspense and determination to get to the end, and there is a disconcerting sense that the resolution of this novel won’t be so neat – but then, what crime novel is, and how many episodes of crime shows have we all watched with unsatisfying or vague endings? Doing this makes us question what we know, and how reality works. Not everything is wrapped up in a nice, tidy bow at the end. We need these unsettling books to remind us of that. Like any good mystery, Hannah and Sulari dangle the clues and suspects in front of us, taunting us playfully as we try to solve the crime. The tropes are used effectively, from red herrings to how to set someone up, to the idea that if you have a certain standing, you simply cannot be guilty – the idea that it is easier to believe the outlier or person with the least resources is the most likely killer based on one event in their past. I did feel that we were being shown how easy it is to assume the worst of someone too, because that is what happens in real life and in crime fiction, and I have found that crime fiction is very revealing, and one of those genres that explores so many avenues of life, so many ways of being that anything is plausible in it.

I always love what Sulari does with tropes and key aspects of a crime story, using them to expose what we think we know about crime fiction and at times, turning it on its head, or using the tropes to her advantage. Through Leo and Hannah, these tropes are revealed through Leo’s creepy emails and Winifred, Cain, Marigold, and Whit’s story that slowly unfolds, a story seen through the eyes of an Australian in America. I had to wonder how much of this was Sulari and how she researched her books, as I know how much she does from my years spent in the world of Rowland Sinclair and his artist friends. The joy in this book was the exploration of the author’s journey – how they write, how they research, and how they craft their characters. Usually, I can piece the clues together in crime stories and guess who the killer might be. I was pleasantly surprised that Sulari had me guessing with this one. I felt that positing one candidate was too easy, and definitely a red herring. It was interesting to see how it all came together, and I am hoping to read it again sometime, as Sulari’s books always have something new to discover on subsequent readings. I am looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.