Written by Tom Carrao
No one is innocent in this Hamptons-set thriller in which three combustible couples convene for a weekend of indulgent luxury which quickly curdles into murder and recrimination. Author Cate Holahan firmly places a reader into the rarefied realm of wealth and privilege barely suppressing a bubbling cauldron of corruption, abuse, adultery and crippling insecurity, the market territory which Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies) has practically trademarked recently.
In alternating chapters detailing the conflicts and confrontations that lead up to the act of violence, and the desperation and suspicions released in its immediate wake, Holahan cleverly and skilfully manipulates the reader’s perceptions moment-to-moment, playfully rearranging the puzzle pieces so that presumptions are regularly undermined and shifted. Just as newly promoted detective sergeant Gabby Watkins, attempting to retain her composure through in-house resentment targeting her gender and race, struggles and bumbles from one certainty of guilt to the next, so, too, does the reader. Each character is shown more than capable of dirty deeds and just as soon as culpability is established, a revelation about another character will topple assumption.
The fatal weekend is set in motion by recent transplant Susan Ahmadi, craving entry into the upper echelon of this high-stakes society. She organises the rental of a beachside property so that she and her husband can get to better know their influential neighbours, as they were linked solely by their respective kids’ relationships. As matters unfold, however, it is clear that there are dark and twisted entanglements already in play between the adults. Susan, on indeterminate hiatus from her former law profession, now full-time mother to three including an autistic son, is supporting her venture capitalist husband Nadal who is attempting to establish a new, potentially lucrative medical app.
Nadal, wholly consumed in the days leading up to its IPO, has absented himself from his wife and family. Louis Murray, an ER physician with a troubling, controlling personality is married to Jenny, an erstwhile orthopaedist-turned-tv sports commentator. Currently, she is also full-time makeup artist, attempting to hide (unsuccessfully) the marks and bruises her husband so freely and fiercely provides. Driven, ruthless lawyer Rachel Klein is increasingly frustrated at husband Ben Hansen’s lazy and non-committed approach to a once-burgeoning writing career, leading to argumentative tumult. Tensions are high as the group gathers at the waterfront home, and only magnify as revelations steadily build and spill over.
Holahan cuts to the quick with a brief, visceral prologue detailing the frantic, clammy final moments of the murder victim, then transitions into a seemingly incongruous opening sequence. This sees Gabby investigating the sexual assault claims of an au pair who attended a house party hosted by a group of adult men, a scenario that will eventually come to serve a crucial role in the central mystery. This scene also sets up a theme, although quite modestly explored, of the anxieties and frustrations of those who may be considered outsiders to ruling social hierarchies. Both Jenny and Gabby are black women in an otherwise exclusively white community and Nadal is Middle Eastern. Even Susan herself, new to the neighbourhood, currently without the status of high-powered career with which to compete with her peers, can be viewed as unworthy interloper by the haughty standards of the neighbourhood.
Hysteria is the ruling impulse, fuelled by a steady flow of alcohol, misunderstandings, and misperceptions accruing at an alarming rate as the sextet continually section off to secretive pairings and closed cabals, which amps up the friction and paranoia. Holahan’s true subject is marriage itself, suggesting its strangely destabilising effects over time, the ways in which it strikes disconcertingly at the core of self and consciousness. Throughout, there are some movingly written paragraphs on the institution—its potential for both elation and exhaustion, enlargement and belittlement, enchantment and disillusionment, amplification and erasure—all of which a reader sees play out between the main cast of characters. Given the marital dynamics on display, and the hothouse behaviours, Holahan convincingly illustrates a situation in which murder is more than a likely result from relationships gone toxically dysfunctional. The victim is revealed quite early on, making this tale much more of a why-done-it than who-done-it, a sure sign that Holahan’s concerns lie outside the mere mystery.
As the cast of characters is extensive, naturally some emerge more sharply than others—a few register weakly as mere embodiments of a specific trait, not fully coherent. Yet Holahan hurtles the pace along with such expert breathlessness that the at times thin characterisation hardly matters—and really, a sure pace is the more central requirement for a successful suspense thriller. Ultimately, Holahan speeds straight past the resolution of the primary mystery with the final chapter set in a prison visitation centre a year after the close of the fateful events of the weekend, in which an even deeper mystery is interrogated, no answers forthcoming. Perhaps the true “one little secret” of the title, certainty remains elusive, locked away in a profound personal recess, a record of a fundamental (if dark) covenant between partners.
A reader would hope that the children of these messy adults would have ample opportunity (at the start of the novel, they are off to summer camp) to spend as much time away from their nightmare parents as possible, if to spare them from becoming yet another casualty of consistently bad choices and destructively impulsive actions.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Everyone has a secret. For some, it’s worth dying to protect. For others, it’s worth killing.
The glass beach house was supposed to be the getaway that Susan needed. Eager to help her transplanted family set down roots in their new town – and desperate for some kid-free conversation – she invites her new neighbors to join in on a week-long sublet with her and her workaholic husband.
Over the course of the first evening, liquor loosens inhibitions and lips. The three couples begin picking up on the others’ marital tensions and work frustrations, as well as revealing their own. But someone says too much. And the next morning one of the women is discovered dead on the private beach.
Town detective Gabby Watkins must figure out who permanently silenced the deceased. As she investigates, she learns that everyone in the glass house was hiding something that could tie them to the murder, and that the biggest secrets of all are often in plain sight for anyone willing to look.
A taut, locked room mystery with an unforgettable cast of characters, One Little Secret promises to keep readers eyes glued to the pages and debating the blinders that we all put on in the service of politeness.
