“Reckless Girls: A Novel”
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pages: 320
Price: $27.00 (Hardcover)
Suspenseful Novel Depicts Death on a Pacific Island
Rachel Hawkins had written many books for young readers then in 2020 published “The Wife Upstairs,” a modern version of “Jane Eyre” set in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
That novel, part thriller, part social satire of the precious folk in privilege village, was a big success.
Now Hawkins has released “Reckless Girls,” inspired by the Agatha Christie novel, “And Then There Were None.”
In the Christie, ten very different people, mostly strangers to one another, are lured to a mansion on Soldier’s Island, off the coast of Devon. The characters are diverse: a woman who believes she is coming to fill a secretarial position, a retired judge, a retired army general, a kind of failed soldier of fortune, a prissy old lady, an exhausted physician, a playboy, a bankrupt old fellow and two servants.
Once on the island, foul weather sets in. Each has a dark secret in their past and they are murdered, one by one.
Hawkins assembles her cast differently.
Our narrator is Lux, 25 years old, a depressed college drop-out. Her mother died painfully of cancer and she is estranged from her father.
Lux is in Hawaii with her new boyfriend, Nico Johannsen. They met in San Diego and sailed to Hawaii, planning to go on to wander the South Pacific, but his boat’s engines are failing and there is damage to the hull.
Lux is working on a hotel cleaning crew, saving money for the repairs. Any reader, especially any alert woman, would be suspicious of Nico right from the start. Dangerously handsome, charming, gregarious, cosmopolitan, reluctant to work, Nico is perhaps from a rich family but won’t ask them for money.
Then appear two American girls, Brittany and Amma, who want to be taken on a grand Pacific sailing trip. As we will learn, they clearly have a secret in their past and a suspicious relationship. Nico’s boat, the “Susannah,” is repaired and the four set sail for Meroe Island, a dot in the Pacific. They want a real adventure, to get “off the grid.”
Meroe island, apparently a real place, and waaaay off the grid, was the site of a shipwreck in the eighteenth century. The survivors were arrested for murder and cannibalism
This island becomes, as they say, a character in the novel. Beautiful and scary, there are sandy beaches but no fresh water. The fish one might catch are poisonous and the jungle is dense and alive with insects.
When they arrive, in the little harbor there is already a catamaran, the “Azure Sky,” new and lovely, with the very wealthy Jake and Eliza aboard. The six become friends and party happily together, then to everyone’s dismay, a third boat arrives.
The sole occupant is Robbie: “ropy and skinny.” Robbie, not their sort, reminds Lux of those guys back in Hawaii who ordered Pabst Blue Ribbon and “had eyes that slid over our bare legs like slime.”
For a while, having brought plenty of food and drink, they party happily, but soon there is friction, sexual infidelity, some small violence and then, one by one, unpleasant and suspicious deaths.
After the first death, as you might expect, the six, then five, etc. experience terror. Is there someone else on the island? Or worse, is one of them killing the others? As we get to know them better, it seems everyone is a potential murderer.
The reader is led in one direction, then another. About the time you settle on a murderer, that character is killed.
Oh, well, not him then.
This novel has mood, clever plot moves, a claustrophobic tropical setting, and suspense is maintained until the end.
A beach read? Well, it depends on which beach.
Don Noble’s newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors.
