The dual timelines of Jessica Moor's enigmatic debut, The Keeper, concern Katie Straw as victim and protagonist. In "Then," Katie is dealing with her mother's terminal illness and a new relationship. "Now," Katie is pulled from the water under a popular suicide bridge. Moor covers the investigation of Katie's death while flashing back to her increasingly controlling lover. The attitudes of the officers involved complicate matters, as do the certainties of the women at the domestic violence shelter where Katie worked that she would not have killed herself.
DS Daniel Whitworth is an old-school detective close to retirement. At times sentimental and insightful, Whitworth's attitudes are mostly infuriating. His trainee, DC Brookes, is a tad further evolved, though they still muse about hackle-raising questions (is a woman in danger if her husband didn't actually hit her?). Moor provides a view into the many facets of domestic abuse through the sheltered women, all different yet none novel. Katie's "Then" story is, in many ways, their "before" version, skillfully showing how any woman might be slowly eclipsed by strategic manipulation.
Fascinatingly, the pace of the investigation renders it almost a backdrop to the consideration of ideas about women. Whitworth's internal thoughts (on "proper rape," crying men, naming his daughter Jenny because "Jennys" are nurses and teachers, not prostitutes) are consistently trying, his character a funnel for a world of misguided ideas. Clever twists bring Katie's case to an end while Moor's amplification of misogyny and abuse spirals on into the future. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review