Get It Together, Wendy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                 I loved Wendy Walker's first novel, All Is Not Forgotten."  Somewhere, on this blog, is a glowing review of it.    My assessment of "Emma In The Night," is not so glowing.  But this does not mean I was absorbed, and engaged.  It just was not the page turner the first book was, and, of course, I was expecting it to be.

                                 Too often, in stories of this type, I complain about authors not exploring the perpetrator's pathology.  Here, almost everyone in this book has their pathology up for grabs.  I was particularly fascinated with Bill and Lucy, a childless couple, with hidden criminal pasts, whose ostensibly sympathetic misfortune goes and pushes them beyond sympathetic and into the pathological, with their agenda, regarding children, and what they feel is their entitlement to them.  Then there is the heroine, Cass, and her mother.  The mother, Judy Martin gets my vote for this year's Mother From Hell, and through mostly her, is explored Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which she has in spades.

                                 But Judy is not the only one suffering.  So is someone else, less aware than Judy. The twists and turns along this psychological path makes up most of what makes the novel genuinely interesting.  But not great.  Because the surrounding story--the disappearance of the siblings Cass and Emma Tanner, has just been done, too often.

                                  Maybe Wendy Walker was trying out my earlier suggestion here.  She succeeds, but with it, she loses the narrative thread of the story.  Is there a way to combine the two?  There is--works like "Rosemary's Baby," "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?" and "The Other" come first to my mind.

                                    But these works are gold standards in themselves.  "Emma In The Night" may be reaching for that, but fails to get there.  Yet the writing is good enough, especial when exploring the pathology, not to give up on Wendy Walker.  She is said to be working on a new novel, and I, for one, cannot wait.

                                     Keep going, Wendy.  But give readers a story, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!