Recommended by a friend whose taste is, quite often, similar to mine. Also, as itt turns out, this was the “Best Crime Novel of the Year” for 2022 according to the judgement of the New York Times

The Lost Kings 
by Tyrell Johnson 
2022/ 
Read by Saskia Maarleveld 9h 23m
Rating: 7/ A+ – lit suspense-crime 

A pair of twins, Jeanne and Jami King, become inseparable after their mother is killed in a terrible car wreck but after a brief stay with an aunt, they have only their alcoholic vet father for parenting.

Maddox is a good friend who lives nearby and the three of them go for long walks on the very nearby Washington state beaches They don’t go to school until they want to and then they have to. Jamie’s relationship with his father has some issues  while Jeanne is the apple of Daddy’s eye.  Daddy has a woman conflict as well and it is she who is found killed.

The story, told entirely by Jeanne, unfolds in two strands, one in the “Now” when Jeanne lives in Oxford, England where she works in a restaurant, takes classes and sees her therapist. She tells the therapist the gist of her past because there are parts she hides from both the therapist and even herself sometimes. The other thread is what happened between the death of her mother and the end of the story. These chapters are called “Then” and “Now” – (I like that keeps things straight.) –

One day “Then” and “Now” meet when Maddox, now an investigative reporter, walks into the restaurant where Jeanne works. Mom left her children plenty of money and Dad has his vets payments.  Still, as the very bright and articulate Jeanne told her therapist, she has to do something and waitressing is fine. Her problem now is that it seems Jamie and her father both vanished at some point in the past so Jeannie has many questions she wants to ask Jamie and her dad and probably Maddox as well. Then Jeannie was finding Maddox terribly attractive.

Through the alternating chapters of THEN and NOW, the suspense is masterfully drawn.  (It didn’t get an Edgar Award for nothing!). It’s not quite so much a “Who Done It?” as it is a “What’s Going ON?” and then a body turns up so it turns into a.”What Happened?” and, finally, a “Who Done It?”

A kind of theme – “The absurd acts of love.”  

Johnson doesn’t “build” the suspense so much as kind of whispers little ideas to the reader who builds it between the aha moments, Johnson is usually just subtle enough and I love it. Then maybe at the 2/3rds mark the suspense turns into tension because some real action starts – never to the point of thriller but very darned close.  And the ending is quite a tangle of twists in itself.    

 The narrator, Saskia Maarleveld, does a superb job, especially on character differentiation.