Alice Rathbone reacts instinctively when a teenager bursts into her kitchen brandishing a knife, rushing past her and her friends toward the room where their children are having a playdate: she grabs the closest weapon and strikes. The fatal blow with a kitchen stool opens The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner (Greenwich Park; The Other Mothers), her third London-set thriller featuring mothers abruptly thrust into danger and mystery.
Alice is traumatized and guilt-ridden by the break-in and the intruder's death. Her husband, Jamie, insists it was a random burglary; the police determine she acted in self-defense. But Alice needs to know more, to prove the tragedy was "out of her hands... not her fault." Ugly social media slurs and whispers of "murderer" spur her to launch an ill-conceived secret investigation. She pursues twisting leads and uncovers unsavory truths that provide more questions than answers. In a state of darkly foreboding obsession, Alice "happens" by the intruder's house and anonymously befriends his family, while readers will detect a sense of duplicity among Alice's closest allies. Stoic Jamie comforts her, a journalist friend offers "to do some digging," and Alice's loyal young nanny abruptly resigns. Chapters from Alice's close third-person perspective alternate with other points of view, revealing connections from well before the break-in and confirming Alice's fears and suspicion that it was not about her. Faulkner's unreliable narrators will entice readers through the shocking turns of this propulsive psychological thriller. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.