Review: Fatal: A Novel

Fatal: A Novel by John Lescroart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Kate cheats on her husband, she only meant it to be a one time thing. However, Peter, the man she cheated with, has other ideas and his world disintegrates around him. Six months later, Peter winds up dead in the ocean of a gunshot wound...

On the heels of reading You Will Know Me, I was in the mood for more domestic suspense so I picked this up when it showed up on Netgalley.

Fatal is an interesting animal. The first half is set when Kate has an affair with Peter, right up until a terror attack puts Kate and her best friend Beth into the hospital. When the book picks back up, Peter is dead, Beth, who happens to be the homicide detective who catches Peter's case, is on crutches and Kate herself is still recovering from a brush with death.

Who killed Peter Ash wound up being a serpentine affair involving a lot of sex and a couple murders. As with a lot of mysteries, things wound up being really complex. While some of the twists caught me by surprise, a few of them were obvious and one I found a little far-fetched.

I thought the characters were a little week. Beth was the only one I felt any attachment to. I didn't care about Kate before she had the affair and she mostly faded into the background in the second half of the book. The ending was a little unsatisfying but it was open ended enough to allow Lescroart to write another book with Beth as the detective, something I'd be up for.

Anyway, I guess I'll give this the safety rating of 3. It was engaging at times but it isn't going to set the world on fire.

View all my reviews