If Something Happens to Me by Alex Finlay

Published by ‎ Minotaur Books on May 28, 2024

If Something Happens to Me weaves together stories of crime and bullying. One crime involves Alison Lane. She is preparing to make out (or more) with Ryan Richardson, her high school boyfriend, when a man clobbers Ryan. Because Alison disappears, the police suspect that Ryan killed her. Ryan can only remember that the man who attacked him was missing his pinky fingers, a detail the police regard as fanciful.

The police can’t pin a crime on Ryan, but most members of his Kansas community assume that Ryan is a killer. They engage in the cherished American pastime of harassing him with self-righteous venom, even after evidence miraculously appears that links Alison’s disappearance to a serial killer.

When Ryan goes to college, he changes his last name. Then he changes colleges. His past catches up with him when, as a law student at Georgetown, he visits Italy on a trip taken annually by top law students.

The other crime story grows out of the bullying of a boy at a private school attended by the children of wealthy parents. Anthony doesn’t respond well to the bullying. Neither does his father, Shane O’Leary, once Shane learns about it. Shane is the head of a Philadelphia crime family. He doesn’t appreciate the school’s attempt to cover up the harassment of his son. O’Leary’s accountant, Michael Harper, is also integral to the story for reasons that can’t be revealed without spoiling one of the plot’s many twists.

The novel’s protagonist is Poppy McGee, who took a job as a deputy sheriff in Kansas after her abrupt discharge from the military for punching an officer. She’s back in her hometown with her brother Dash and a father who is battling cancer. Her first big case involves a car that is pulled from the lake. Alison Lane was apparently abducted from the car, but the two bodies in the car are both male. Both died from gunshot wounds. But where is Alison?

Poppy soon learns that someone in the Sheriff’s Department is misleading her. She also suspects that Dash and her father know more about Alison’s disappearance than they’re telling her. The Sheriff has told her not to cooperate with FBI Agent Jane Fincher, but it isn’t clear why she’s been given that command.

The story threads eventually come together, although it takes some time to understand the relative time frames that make a unified story possible. The well-constructed plot achieves a satisfying degree of complexity without becoming convoluted. Poppy and the reader must decide which characters are worthy of trust. The answers to that question and to some of the novel’s mysteries may be surprising.

The story develops at a good pace. This isn’t an action novel, but Alex Finlay builds suspense by placing characters in danger. Self-sacrifice and redemption give the reader reasons to feel good about a couple of bad characters. The good characters are likable and the plot is more credible than is typical of modern thrillers. All of that adds up to an enjoyable read.

RECOMMENDED