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Architect Ray Jackson is going through a mid-life crisis. The memories of his childhood, where he and his mother were constantly moving, are crowding his everyday life. He finds himself in his basement rebuilding all the houses he lived in as a child. He also has a collection of every key to every front door they ever had and he looks at them a lot and sometimes even travels to the old houses and lets himself in to search for things his mother might have left hidden. He knows he's looking for something that has to do with his missing father, but he doesn't know what it is. Meanwhile his relationship with his beautiful and successful furniture-making wife Leigh is falling apart. He knows he's pushing her away, making her miserable, and she's responded by having an affair with his business partner. Although they still love each other, their life together is going downhill fast. After a night where Leigh once again tries to make amends with him, Ray starts a fight and he goes into the basement to sleep. When he wakes up Leigh is gone. He isn't sure what happened, but he thinks she just went off somewhere. After a few days when no one has heard from Leigh, her parents and friends are starting to worry. What has happened to her? Ray is coming under a lot of scrutiny by his cop father-in-law, who calls the police. At the same time, Kat, a long-lost friend of Leigh's, is now looking to restart their old friendship. Kat and Leigh had been best buddies through childhood. In their teens Leigh and Tom, Kat's brother, fell in love, but when Leigh said she wanted more out of life and left Tom for Ray, he committed suicide. Everyone blamed themselves and could no longer keep in touch. Now, Kat feels she needs to see Leigh again. At first, she thinks that Ray is nutty and has done something to Leigh, and then insists, to prove he didn't harm Leigh, that he help her find her old friend. KEEPER OF THE KEYS is not much of a mystery. Even though Leigh goes missing and no one knows what has happened to her, there's not much tension about her well-being. This book mostly deals with secrets from childhood and how it affects the grown-up life of the people involved. All the characters are painstakingly created and filled with very human foibles. The pages are filled with conversations between the characters and all are very concerned with how they feel and how their history has shaped the happiness of their present lives. The book was well paced and written well. The characters are interesting enough and all have something to say, but I felt a bit let down by the end of the novel. The story did have a twist, but it didn't strike me as solid and it felt a little tacked on. I can't say I enjoyed KEEPER OF THE KEYS, but it was very well written.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, November 2006
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