Strangers on a Crazy Train: Book Review

★★★

So there are these two contract killers who meet on a train to Paris.

That’s not the start of a joke. It’s the opening of It Had to Be You, an often bizarre novel labeled “romantic suspense” by the publisher. 

Jonathan and Eva are lonely and self-pitying sociopaths who feel most alive when they’re killing someone and earning huge fees from the respective agencies that send them out to commit murder. When they first meet on that Eurostar train, they end up having wildly intense and athletic sex on a luggage rack in the baggage compartment.

Sound improbable?  Well it’s even more so when you consider that drug-addled Jonathan has a bullet in his chest as well as what might be a concussion.  Also improbable: the fencing class where Jonathan’s neck gets cut by the teacher even though his face mask should have included protection for his neck. Likewise the scene where the two killers have a seven-course meal together at a tiny French restaurant whose owner’s name is Gestalt (!) and we only hear about the salad and the snails. Given that Jonathan’s a metrosexual sophisticate in Tom Ford suits, it’s weird that he doesn’t even discuss the wine.

After that first erotic onboard collision, he and Eva have been drawn back together because Eva feels that he ghosted her when in fact he just passed out in one of the train’s toilets. But he must be a horrible person for mistreating her, and because her job is killing horrible people, she becomes obsessed with revenge.  So she gets assigned to take him out. Jonathan, on the other hand, had plans for blockbuster sex on his mind, not murder. He’s been longing for one more magnificent encounter with Eva because he is “obsessed, magnetized, dangerously in lust.” 

Their paths cross again and again through the book with multiple plot twists amid the sex and violence. Both hired killers are surprisingly reflective about their lives, their outsider status, what it’s like to stalk and kill an assigned victim. This can sometimes makes for mordant comedy as when Eva thinks, “I know he’s lying to me, even though I’m lying to him, too….it’s how every relationships starts.”

But there are also lines that are laughable in and of themselves: “I want to touch her, but not so much, not all at once.  It is overwhelming.  I have been cooking her for so long that she burns.  I need to take her in slowly.  Blow on her first.” They’re almost redeemed by spots of lovely writing when the author describes Paris, something she excels at.

The publisher is targeting fans of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Killing Eve, and perhaps folks who remember Prizzi’s Honor. It’s ultimately a very dark book that draws you deep into Eva and Jonathan’s sociopathy and trauma. Can they have a lasting relationship while the body count around them keeps mounting? The sketchy last pages seem to say yes because they feel like they’re setting up a sequel.

Lev Raphael is the former crime fiction reviewer for The Detroit Free Press and has also reviewed books for The Washington Post and several public radio stations in Michigan.

How Dumb Can a Thriller Character Be?

Picture yourself after being hit by a car.  You wake up in a hospital bruised and battered, with big gaps in your memory. Your foot is damaged and you can’t walk without assistance when you’re released because it’s painful and difficult.

So when the husband you don’t remember brings you home to the enormous house you don’t remember, and says that you can sleep in the guestroom on the first floor, you of course insist on sleeping in your bedroom up a double flight of stairs, right?  You obviously need the challenge, and you “don’t want to be any trouble.”

That’s the case even though you don’t know your way around, you don’t have crutches (standard issue in a situation like this), but you did get a measly little cane which barely supports you when you try to walk and which you keep dropping.

You haven’t made any attempt to contact your friends at work or any other friends while you’ve been in the hospital, and even though you can’t seem to get internet service at home, you don’t really question your husband about these missing colleagues and friends.  You just let it slide.

Trying to jog your memory, you study a photo album where you notice that the hair on the back of your husband’s head in a mirror is a different color than the rest of his hair. Of course you’re only mildly puzzled since you’ve never heard of Photoshop.

When you finally discover that your husband isn’t who he claims to be, you crisscross the extravagant kitchen multiple times in your attempts to escape (and make a phone call) and while doing so, you avoid picking up anything that could be a weapon. You just hobble back and forth and don’t bother grabbing a knife, a weighty meat tenderizer, a pot or a pan.

Why? Because you’re an idiot. Because you’re a heroine in a film that gives “femjep” a bad name.

You’re not the only idiot on screen. The detective who figures out that there’s something fishy about your husband comes to your house alone. No call for backup. An ex-cop I interviewed for my latest mystery recently told me that this is one of the most frustrating things he sees on TV and in films: cops going cowboy. “It doesn’t happen,” he said.

But it has to happen in films written by people who think the audience is too dumb to know better.

Secret Obsession is only about ninety minutes long, but it’s a black hole of stupidity. There’s a pretty house to ogle and the leads have nice hair, but that’s about the best it can offer.  Don’t waste your time, unless you enjoy yelling at characters who just can’t seem to do anything right.

Lev Raphael is the author of State University of Murder and two dozen other books in many genres. He offers creative writing workshops, editing, and mentoring online at writewithoutorders.com.