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NOT A SOUND
by Heather Gudenkauf
Park Row Books, May 2017
352 pages
$15.99
ISBN: 0778319954


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Two years previously, Amelia Winn, a sexual trauma nurse, decided to walk a shaky victim from the ER to her car and so became the victim of someone who apparently was intent upon killing that woman by driving a car straight into her. That victim was indeed killed and Amelia became a different sort of victim, the victim of a depraved sort of indifference who did survive but was left totally deaf.

Now alone in all kinds of ways, Amelia has lost her marriage because she turned to alcohol after her injury and she lives in a small cabin by the Five Mines River with her service dog Stitch. She has been pressured successfully by a friend to join AA and regain sobriety and to take classes to learn sign language and lip reading. At last, she has an interview for a job, not nursing but connected to a large clinic handling records, and she hopes to land the job and use it to figure out how to return to nursing in spite of her impairment.

Always a physically active person, she has headed out on the river on her paddleboard with Stitch sitting happily up front, her plan being to get in a good head-clearing period of exercise before changing clothes and heading to the interview. A motor boat she can't hear and never sees sets up a wake that dumps her and Stitch into the cold water and although she gets back on the paddleboard, Stitch ignores her and heads for the riverbank where he suddenly becomes stiff and hunkered down as he stares at something. Amelia tries calling him but he won't respond so she joins him on the shore and sees what is upsetting him: the naked body of a dead woman tangled in the branches and roots in the edge of the water. A second closer look convinces Amelia that this is someone she knows, a nurse she used to work alongside periodically in the ER. Amelia calls the police and waits for them and misses her interview appointment.

It's a great setup. The remote area, empty and silent, the isolation of the protagonist who cannot hear and can only communicate with others if they know how to sign or know to face her directly and speak clearly, and the amazing dog that may be the best character in the novel pull the reader in quickly and sympathetically.

Throughout the rest of the book, Amelia accidently discovers and deliberately sleuths out a number of clues and suspicions, many of which she shares with the lead detective, Jake. But her frequent misunderstandings and following of wrong paths embarrass her more and more and she keeps striking out alone looking for evidence that will be compelling enough to convince authorities that what she suspects deserves immediate attention.

Of course she gets into more and more trouble and eventually the danger is aimed directly and deliberately at her and this, surely, is the proper pattern of a thriller. But the pattern here does not work. Heather Gudenkauf is masterful in drawing the lonely existence of the profoundly deaf and their dependence upon other people for help, their use of service dogs to help them maintain their independence, and their need to develop coping skills they never needed before. But Gudenkauf is not very good at pulling off a thriller.

By chapter five, the reader is beginning to be uneasy about the level of Amelia's intelligence and the poor decisions she so impulsively makes. Unfortunately this uneasiness grows and grows. Amelia, already the victim of someone indifferent to her fate, is herself indifferent to the consequences of her own actions. She is fully capable of breaking the law by snooping into and hacking the files and records of not one but two doctors. This is deliberate and the only excuse that she has is that she wants to. Without giving away too much of the plot, Amelia is capable of suspecting first one and then another and then another suspect of the murder of the woman whose body she found, always convinced that this time she's right.

It should be apparent that the author needs to provide a credible reason for the protagonist to be involved in the situation being investigated. Successful thrillers have characters whose position in some kind of law enforcement makes them vulnerable. Unsuccessful thrillers have protagonists incapable of comprehending either the danger they are inviting or the many ways in which they are compromising the real investigation. Amelia is guilty of both of these transgressions. Most of the characters remain blissfully undeveloped, cardboard-like puppets the author dances through the scenery, and if the reader questions Amelia's intelligence then the assessment of the ultimate villain would have to be, in the words of a character from the grand film A River Runs Through It, "dumber than dirt."

Most disturbing is that when push comes to shove, Amelia is willing to kill her adversary when she does not necessarily need to and she has the perfect tool to use. Are service dogs for the deaf really trained to kill on command? NOT A SOUND does not thrill.

§ Diana Borse is retired from teaching English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and savoring the chance to read as much as she always wanted to.

Reviewed by Diana Borse, May 2017

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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