Someone We Know by Shari Lapena

 

I've been having a pretty good run with Shari Lapena books. I'm not intentionally trying to seek her books out but they all became available from Libby for me around the same time so I've been reading them one after another. I still have many of her books on my TBR to go, which I'm looking forward to. This book is once again set in the fictional town of Aylesford, just like the last one I read, Not a Happy Family. 

Someone We know starts out with the harrowing hammer attack of a woman. We don't know who she is, we don't know who the attacker is, although it seems to be a male. Shortly after that, someone named Robert Pierce reports to the police that his wife is missing. He certainly seems like he has a lot to hide, but knowing this is a psychological thriller, we can pretty much rule him out as the killer. After some questioning, the police suggests that his wife Amanda simply walked away, which angers Robert. Robert's reaction paints him as a possibly violent man.

Robert's neighbor, Olivia Sharpe finds out that her son Raleigh, who's only 16, has been breaking and entering into neighbors' houses to hack into their computers for fun. She's shocked and wants to make him confess to the neighbors in person and apologize. Olivia's husband Paul tells her that's a terrible idea. Olivia makes her son tell her which houses he's broken into. He doesn't tell her all of them, only comes clean on two houses, Robert's and another neighbor Carmine Torres. She demands to know what he does in these houses. He admits to hacking into their computers and possibly sends out fictitious emails from their email accounts. Olivia is disturbed by this, and decides to write an anonymous apology letter to those two houses, saying that she's the mother of a son who had admittedly broken into their houses and messed with their computers. The letter unsettles Carmine, who tries to figure out who sent the letter. Robert, who's very unsettled as well, decides to keep it a secret. He's worried what the intruder may have seen from his house because he's been hiding his wife Amanda's burner phone and he's noticed the burner phone had been moved. The burner phone contains very incriminating messages about him, where Amanda tells another man that Robert is a psychopath. Olivia talks to her best friend/neighbor Glenda and tells her about Raleigh. Glenda is very supportive. Glenda's son Adam has an alcohol problem so she knows what it's like to be dealing with a problematic teenager. 

A car was found submerged in a lake. Police notice the car had all the windows rolled down, a sign that the submerge was intentional. Police found a battered woman in the trunk, clearly a homicide. They call Robert to identify the body. Robert identifies it as Amanda. Police questions Robert about his marriage. He said they were very happy. Autopsy reveals Amanda was killed by a hammer and she was 10 weeks pregnant. Police goes back to Robert and asks him if he knew about the pregnancy. He says yes. Police tells him they need to search his house. He said they can after they get a warrant. During the time the police is gone, he quickly buries the burner phone in his garden.

The neighborhood book club discusses about the finding of Amanda's body. Everyone talks about how pretty she was and how much of a flirt she was. Carmine brings up the "letter". Everyone's out of sorts but Glenda tells them to support the mother that's going through this. Olivia secretly really appreciates Glenda. By this point in the book, I was pretty certain Glenda is the killer. I turned out to not exactly be right but I was very close. 

Detective Webb and Detective Moen find out about an affair Robert was having with his neighbor across the street, Becky Harris. They interview Becky. Becky claims Robert is harmless. Carmine is going door to door to try to determine who sent the letter. When Carmine gets to Olivia's door, Olivia acts quite guilty, making Carmine believe she's the writer of the letter.

Becky tells the detectives that she saw Paul and Amanda having a heated argument in a car together late at night shortly before she went missing. She thinks Paul was having an affair with Amanda. Detectives interview Paul, who claims that he had caught Amanda having an affair with Becky's husband, Larry. He was only talking to Amanda to tell her to stop the affair because they all work together. Detectives talk to Larry, who confesses about the affair but says he didn't kill anyone.

Detectives start looking into everyone's alibi, none of which can be fully corroborated. Carmine one night sees Adam running through the neighborhood, visibly drunk with a broken hockey stick in his hand. Police learns about a small cabin owned by the Sharpes (Paul and Olivia) near the lake where Amanda's body was found. Police wants to search the cabin. Paul begrudgingly agrees. Paul and Olivia let them in. They pour some luminol and blood was detected all over the kitchen floor, walls and ceiling. The Sharpes are shocked. Paul is arrested.

Glenda and Adam run into Carmine one day. Carmine asks Adam if he told his mom about their previous encounter. Glenda wonders if Carmine saw them. Forensics has returned that the blood in the cabin belongs to Amanda, but they don't have enough evidence to officially charge Paul, so they let him go, thinking they could surveil him and catch more evidence. 

Once Paul gets home, his son Raleigh tells him that he's actually broken into Adam's house before, and got on Adam's dad Keith's computer and knows Keith was having an affair with Amanda. Raleigh doesn't want to be caught for breaking and entering but this might exonerate Paul. Since Glenda and Keith are Olivia and Paul's best friends, they also know where the spare key is hidden for the cabin.

Paul tells the police all this new information. The police finds incriminating emails about the affair on Keith's computer and he comes clean. Keith tells the cops he met Amanda at the cabin the Friday before she went missing and left her there. When he went back the next day, she was gone. 

Carmine is strangled to death by someone. Zoe, her next door neighbor found her body and told the police she saw Glenda coming to Carmine's house earlier. Police talks to Glenda and Glenda quickly confesses to both murders. Police believe she killed Carmine but she's covering for someone on Amanda's murder. The book goes back to the beginning and tells us what happened. Glenda's son Adam had found emails on his dad's computer and knew about his dad's affair with Amanda and meeting her at the cabin. He went to the cabin after his dad left. Amanda assumed it was his dad Keith, and opened the door smiling and flirty. Adam was raging with anger. He saw a hammer and bludgeoned her to death. Next, he called his mom Glenda. Glenda came and cleaned everything up. Later, when Carmine talked about their encounter, Glenda assumed Carmine saw their cars leaving separately from the cabin and knew they were involved in the killing. Glenda also realized the time Adam started drinking was when he realized his dad was cheating. Adam confesses to the cops about his involvement in the murder. Due to his age (16 years old), he will only have to serve a few years before he gets out, but Glenda will be facing much harsher punishments. 

Robert is very happy with the turn of events. His narration tells us that he was considering killing Amanda so this was convenient. He knew Amanda was having an affair with two men based on her burner phone messages. He knew one of them was Larry, because he called the number and recognized the voice. He didn't get a response on the other number, which now he knows is Keith. He tries to dig up the phone he buried, planning on destroying the messages on there for good. But he can't find it. He knows exactly where he buried it, so now he thinks it must be Becky, who can see the garden from her house. He considers murdering her. 

I loved this book. So many twists and turns. So many people looking suspicious. It also reminds me of those HOA neighborhoods where the women are so chatty and gossipy and exclusive. Everyone is playing a game of pretend while secretly battling inner demons. I don't even know what's the point of it. All the men that were on the suspects list, with all their women having doubts about them. Only to find out at the end it's a teenage boy and his mother that did all the bad deeds. This is a book I would recommend to anyone that enjoys a good psychological thriller!