_Promise Not to Tell_, JAK

Second in a loosely connected trilogy, this contemporary romance with mystery / suspense elements is about what a JAK reader expects. A thirty something Pioneer Square art gallery owner with past childhood trauma that interferes with her ability to sleep (anxiety attacks in the middle of the night, around the time of the trauma) hires a private investigation agency made up of one older man and three younger. The three younger were somewhat older children trapped in the same cult nightmare that causes her so much anxiety; the older man was the rescuer who adopted / fostered the young men after the cataclysmic fire ending of the cult.

What triggered the gallery owner to hire the investigator was the death of one of the adult women in the cult, who had been, well, selling would be the wrong word, some of her art to the gallery owner. The artist lived on one of the San Juan Islands (“Lost Island”, has private ferry service including you can go out there with your car, which makes me sit and go, hunh. I don’t think this maps to an actual island. But I could be wrong.) (but it kind of sounds like Lopez). When the gallery owner and private investigator go out to the island, all kinds of antics ensue, forcing them to pursue seemingly unrelated crimes simultaneously.

Lots of typical JAK elements: the investigator does martial arts. There is a secondary romance for the older man at the agency. There is extensive extended family drama. There is a closely hold family corporation that is part of the family drama. There is a gay couple running a B&B. There is a charismatic, psychopathic bad guy who fathered children who were raised by other people who grow up to make trouble of their own. Older woman with money living on Queen Anne. Embezzling that a company does not report for fear of the reputational impact putting them out of business. Women sleeping with the boss and being cast aside and / or fired because on the job relationships at the company are verboten and that’s an easy way to make the boss’ problem go away.

The tech economy elements are interesting: JAK hammers hard on the idea that women do a fair amount of the tech work but don’t get the credit. That men are has beens at a very young age. She captures the rapid development of South Lake Union relatively well, especially the disappearing views.

I think one of my favorite moments was at the Wallerton house. It really felt true, altho who knows, maybe it isn’t true at all. Houses generally speaking have a conspicuous front door, and a less conspicuous but at least you know to look for it back slider, French door, regular door, and maybe a side door or two. But especially in houses in areas that need mud rooms or have wood storage, you can wind up with weird entrances that don’t exactly look like entrances immediately, and often, these are soft entry points — everything else might be locked up tight, but sometimes that one will be unlocked pretty much all the time. (Basement bulkheads are another example: a lot of them aren’t locked themselves, and lead to a door which is often unlocked, and internally there is access from the basement to the main part of the house, again, often unlocked.) I cannot, off hand, think of this being described in a book, but it was here, and I really liked that.

I may go back and reread the first book in the trilogy again. Obviously I will continue to read and reread JAK.

ETA: Book #2 for this year.