He Started It by Samatha Downing (2020)

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With her three books to date — My Lovely Wife (2019), He Started It (2020), For Your Own Good (2021) — I think Samatha Downing has achieved Marmite Author status. People seem to either dislike her style or like her a lot. Except for her first book, I am firmly in the can’t-wait-for-her-next-book camp. Her unlikeable characters, disturbing plots, and dark humor appeal to my reading tastes — noir is my favorite genre. 

 He Started It is a first person narrative from the viewpoint of Beth. Eddie, Beth, and Portia, three siblings, are on an unusual road trip. They are retracing the trip they took 20 years ago with their grandfather when they were children (ages 14, 12, and 6) though this time it’s only grandpa’s ashes they have with them. The road trip is stipulated in grandpa’s will. They have to take the same route, visit the same road-side attractions, and scatter his ashes at the final stop in order to inherit his sizable estate. Also on the trip are Eddie’s wife, Krista, and Beth’s husband, Felix.

Apparently the first road trip wasn’t a fun family experience and this repeat outing is proving to be anything but, with odd incidents starting to mount up including the possibility that they are being followed by a black pickup truck. 

 We only see the action through Beth’s eyes and the reader figures out early on that she isn’t a reliable narrator. She is following someone on Instagram but we don’t know who or why. She has a journal masked as a family saga novel that describes bits about the original trip but we don’t know whose journal it is or why she is keeping it secret. And apparently there was someone else on the first trip but we don’t get to know who that person was for a while.

Beth parcels out details about the first trip in small chunks, revealing the complete picture, slowly like pulling aside a curtain, as we read, chapter by chapter. Some readers might think this slows down the pacing but I enjoyed watching the picture emerge until the “ah ha” moments start getting closer together. She also starts filling in details about the other people in the car: maybe she and Felix aren’t in the best of places, what’s the deal with Eddie and Krista and their whirlwind marriage, and Portia is a stripper, not a waitress.

Downing is very good at slowly building the tension. The closer they get to the end of the trip, the faster things start to come together and the higher the sense of dread. If asked for one word to describe this book, I would say noirish. It’s maybe the last 25% that cements it as noirish for me. It’s there that we get the complete picture of what happened on both trips and the ending is pure noir.

For me, this is a really good, slow-to-build, suspense novel that delivers quite a few surprises. The plot is nicely constructed and I have a mental image of the author with an immense whiteboard with lines and arrows laying out the story. The characters might all be unlikeable but I really like what Downing does with them. They have quirks, mannerisms, and other characteristics that make them fun to read and try to analyze. 

 It isn’t a book for everyone but I recommend it if you lean toward the dark and can appreciate unpleasant people and situations. 

All of the road side attractions in the book visits are real. I didn’t know about several but would certainly visit if I found myself in the area; I’d be a sucker for the UFO Watchtower in Center, Colorado.

Keywords: suspense novels, road trip novels, roadside attractions novels