Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane

 Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane is a gripping domestic thriller. In the prologue, Kane plunges readers into a chilling tableau: the Tanner family of four has vanished—dinner half-eaten, a bloodstain by the door, their bookstore in Sleepy Hollow, New York, on fire. Fifteen years later, the Tanner’s presumed-dead daughter, Aubrey, returns at just the moment an emergency court hearing is taking place regarding the estate of her late grandfather Xavier Tanner, sparking an unlikely alliance of three of the women in the room who hold long-buried secrets.

The courtroom scene is narrated by Stella, a psychologist whose mother Isabel is Xavier’s niece. Marni Richards is an elementary school teacher who suffers with great anxiety. Hanno Sato is the owner of the local coffee shop. In one way or another, each woman has a connection with the Tanners.

The story of what happened on the day the Tanners disappeared is rolled out with  tension-ratcheting momentum as each woman takes the stage briefly in the telling of what happened that day. However, the multiple point of view structure of the thriller with all four women telling the story is a challenge to readers trying to keep track of so many voices.

Aubrey challengers and threatens Stella, Marni, and Hanna with what she knows and what she thinks the role of each woman was on the day the Tanners disappeared. Before the story reaches its conclusions, one of the women will be questioned by the police, another will be caught up in the terror involving a son who has gone missing, and the third will be wrecked by the reveal of all the details about what happened 15 years ago.

Darby Kane is the pseudonym of HelenKay Dimon a former trial attorney and an award-winning romantic suspense author. A native of Pennsylvania, Dimon lives in California.