One of many strange things about OJ Simpson is that he wandered around for thirty years after having murdered Goldman and Brown. For thirty years, he lived with the open secret. (I'm curious how the world of football will deal with the inevitable revelation that Simpson's brain shows signs of CTE. Maybe there will be a renewed, superficial interest in "anger management.")
What happens after you kill someone? And, also, what happens to your parents?
This later question is the odd source of inspiration for "What Happened to Nina?" by Dervla McTiernan. In a somewhat tasteless move, McTiernan has spent many months considering the story of Brian Laundrie, the OJ Simpson of 2021. After Laundrie murdered his girlfriend, he hung out with his parents for several days (then he disappeared into the wild, and committed suicide).
What were the kitchen-sink conversations like? What did Laundrie's parents suspect, and when did their suspicions take shape? How (and when) did the Laundries interact with the Petitos? And what occurred within the Petito marriage? How would the Petitos characterize their experience with the press? What was the role of surveillance, money, legal consultation?
All of these questions keep "Nina" churning along. (McTiernan invents characters, and she allows them to spin off in surprising directions. She doesn't stick closely to the Laundrie "story.")
This is a detective tale, but the detectives aren't unbiased; every revelation is subject to manipulation, burial. The two warring families use reporters as pawns; one set of parents makes various sinister moves through social media. These are people surviving in extremis; it's like you're reading about someone trapped in a coffin, under quicksand, trying to find a way out. The secret of pacing is to reroute, and reroute, and reroute your characters, in a way that feels "organic." McTiernan keeps upping the stakes--in a manner that seems effortless.
One of the better novels I've read this year.
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