Everything Old is New Again... Even Murder (The Night Shift BOOK REVIEW)

Where were you on the eve of the new millennium? Taking Prince’s words to heart, out partying like it was 1999 (for one final, crazy night)? Perched nervously in front of your computer, which was—if a host of doomsayers were actually onto something with their wild theories—about to trigger a meltdown of epic proportions, due to some numerical programming snafu that would kick in as the internal clock and calendar ticked over to 2000? Or, maybe you feared [hoped?] the biblical apocalypse was nigh, and you were doing… well, whatever one does to prepare for all of that?

No matter where you were or what you were doing on Y2K, though, it was infinitely better than what happens in Alex Finlay’s chilling thriller The Night Shift, wherein that fateful night sees four teenage girls brutally attacked at the Blockbuster where they all work… three of whom are killed, and a fourth, injured. [See? Things could always be worse.]

The police quickly come up with and subsequently arrest a suspect—a young man who was sweet on one of the girls—but once he’s out on bail, he does a runner… virtually disappearing into thin air. He’s just… gone.

But here’s where things get really interesting, because Finlay changes things up by taking the reader straight from the year 2000, to a point some fifteen years later… a night on which the lone survivor of the Y2K attack—Ella, now a therapist—gets a phone call from an old acquaintance—Mr. Steadman, the principal from her high school, whom she hasn’t talked to in years—making a desperate plea for her help.

It’s happened again; four teens were attacked at an ice cream shop, in the same New Jersey town that’s still reeling from the atrocity a decade-and-a-half earlier, and—as in Ella’s case—only one of the four survived, a girl named Jesse. And Ella, being in the unique position to completely grok all the things Jesse feels, is the best possible person to get anything out of the non-communicative girl.

But, as Ella begins working with Jesse—trying to help her piece together her fragmented memories of the horrifying experience, along with two other people close to the case (FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller, and Jesse’s lawyer, Chris)—it becomes less and less clear what part Jesse really played in the shocking tragedy… or precisely how the two glaringly-similar cases might be connected.

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I love books in which nothing is clear-cut, because the uncertainty aligns with how I view life: as a winding road with a thousand little by-ways, which we travel down with only the vaguest idea of where we’re going… interacting with many people often, some, just once over the course of a lifetime, and still others, very randomly, but on multiple occasions.

The Night Shift is very much like that, and just when you think you understand how one thing (event or person) relates—or doesn’t—to another, Finlay turns everything you thought you knew on its head, and surprises you again.

Something else I really appreciation is a story told from multiple perspectives, because it shows how very differently each of us can view the same things… due to what we actually know (see, take part in), of course, but also owing to our unique experiences, which create the personal biases (propensities, beliefs) and fall-back reactions or behaviors from which we operate. The Night Shift is told from three different perspectives, shifting back and forth between them, as well as shifting in time, between NYE of 1999 and 2015. [If all of that sounds confusing, never fear... it really isn’t; we’re always aware who we’re following, and where along the timeline they are.]  

Oh, and then there’s a nod to my still-to-this-day GOAT movie, Fargo.  [Yes, really. There is no limit to my love for that 1996 film.] Special Agent Sarah Keller—smart, determined, hardworking, and long-suffering Feebie that she is—also happens to be… pregnant. Very, very pregnant, a la Fargo’s Marge Gunderson (that brilliantly-written Everywoman role so memorably and perfectly portrayed by Frances McDormand). There’s much to be said about the amazing dedication to her job that a third-trimester woman shows, when focussed with laser-like intensity on not only keeping herself and her unborn child safe, but on trying to keep others safe by catching the bad guy. 

The Night Shift is one of those books I really hated to put down--to refill my glass, go to the bathroom, or (I hate to say it) go to sleep--and I hated even more to reach the last page, because the journey getting there was such a fantastic ride. 

If you love smart, engrossing thrillers (suspense, crime, mystery, what have you), then this one should absolutely go to the top of your list. 

Trust me; it’s really that good.

~GlamKitty