When a thriller set in the 21st century begins with its female narrator announcing, "I just wanted to get married," readers may wonder if there's a feminist awakening in store for her. But one shouldn't assume anything while reading The Tip Line, Vanessa Cuti's debut, which slyly flouts expectations. Thirty-year-old Virginia Carey thinks the Suffolk County Police Department will be a great place to meet guys, so she takes a job answering its crime line and logging anonymous tips. She's just getting to know a dashing homicide detective when she receives a tip from a female caller: "You have to tell them that there are dead girls out near Gilgo Beach. They're not even buried." The police act on the tip and, sure enough, the bodies of four women are found on the beach. When the caller phones again, she tells Virginia that the women are escorts, as she is, and that she agrees with an idea floated on the news: a cop is behind the killings.
Virginia's narration has a poetic aspect--e.g., "Worry is a color-changing thing... and it turns to anger in the right light." Compounding the narrative's fragmented quality: Virginia sometimes presents her fantasy life as reality before turning to what's really happening. Cuti doesn't deliver the payoffs of a traditional thriller--The Tip Line is too unconventional for that--but she understands that in the best noirs, the most interesting protagonists are compromised. At one point, Virginia feels relief when "the good in me muffled the dark in me." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer