TWIST OF THE KNIFE

Fiction

Skirting the law, searching for truth

TWIST OF THE KNIFE
By Becky Masterman

320 pp. Minotaur

Reviewed by Sarah Corbett Morgan

Protagonist Brigid Quinn is a retired FBI officer, having left the force early for reasons hinted at but not detailed in this third Brigid Quinn mystery. These details are in the author’s previous Quinn books, which I have not read, but might after reading this one.

Quinn has flown to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where her elderly father is in the hospital with pneumonia and not doing well.  During her stay, she reconnects with an old co-worker, Laura Coleman, now a temporary investigator for the Innocence Project. She has dredged up new details on the closed case, the murder of a woman and subsequent disappearance of her three children. The husband, Marcus Creighton, was convicted and has been sitting on death row for the past 15 years. 

The case is old, and many have told her to leave it alone, but Coleman believes he is innocent, framed for the death. There are many inconsistencies in the case, and she points these out to her friend, Brigid, who is less than convinced but wants to help her friend. The two, plus a pro bono lawyer with the project, begin working for his release.

Those are the bare bones of the story, but what makes this novel so much better than a simple whodunnit is Masterman’s skill as a writer and her profound understanding of complex characters and their thorny lives. She delves deep into family dynamics, police corruption, death, and loss.  

Brigid has many conflicts. Some of them have to do with her friend, Laura, her fear that she may have gotten too close to Creighton and her loyalty to her as someone who once saved her life. This fear is further compounded when the state issues an expedited execution order and she watches her friend come completely unraveled. 

The plot of the guilt or innocence of Creighton is told side by side with the story of Brigid’s relationship with her family, her clash with her mother, and her cop brother, Todd. It is a police family through and through. Masterman skillfully describes what a tight and yet shattered family they are through the use of brother-sister in-jokes, body language, and wonderfully natural dialogue. 

Brigid’s brother is having a hard time dealing with their father’s failing health and refuses to go to the hospital to visit. Brigid is avoiding the scene because of her relationship with her mother. There is another sister who is deep-cover CIA, and no one knows how to contact her. At one point, Brigid says to her husband, Carlo, who she left behind at home in Tucson, “I’d rather just tamp this down. From now on I plan to do that until I’m around ninety and then just implode.” He is a funny, supportive, and wonderful off-stage presence in the book.

The investigation is full of twists and turns. There are small time crooks and some not so small, police corruption and cut corners. And Brigid isn’t adverse to skirting the letter of the law to get to what she thinks is the truth in all this.

The character of Brigid was a bit “tough-guy” for my liking. I struggled with the first couple of pages but soon got used to her gruff nature, figuring, who knows what female FBI agents have to do to fit in with that culture. We get a feel for the rough mentoring she got in the prologue to the book, her first witnessed death by electrocution.   

I would have guessed Masterman was ex-FBI or had some law enforcement background. I was surprised to learn that, before turning to writing, she was an acquisitions editor for a publishing house specializing in medical textbooks for those people as well as their forensics counterparts. Whatever her previous occupation, this mystery is a stand-up winner.