In Choose Me, “Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned”
The men in Taryn Moore’s life never fail to let her down. First, there’s her father who left when she was a small child. Then there’s Liam, the boy she dated through high school and followed to college in Boston, only to be dumped. Finally, there’s her English professor, Jack Dorian, who sleeps with her twice and then rejects her. Is there any wonder that she’s working on a paper entitled, “Hell Hath No Fury: Violence and the Scorned Woman”?
Before she can finish that thesis, however, Taryn is found dead on the sidewalk outside her building, apparently after she jumped from her fifth floor balcony. For one police detective, MacClellan, it’s an open and shut case. But his partner, Frances “Frankie” Loomis, isn’t so sure. According to the letter found on the kitchen table, Taryn had just been accepted into a prestigious graduate program. And what about the mac and cheese she had warmed in the microwave and failed to eat? The officers also cannot locate Taryn’s cellphone, leading Frankie to believe someone walked off with it, perhaps after staging the suicide.
When a forensic team visits the apartment, luminal lights up the blood stains that the killer attempted to wipe away. A suicide is now a murder investigation and there are plenty of suspects.
It’s become a trend in the mystery field, possibly started by mega-seller James Patterson, for a well known writer to team up with a lesser known one, dividing up the work, knowing that a loyal fan base can be counted on to buy the book. Here, Tess Gerritsen, with more than two dozen bestsellers – the Rizzoli & Isles ones having inspired the popular TV series – teams up with Gary Braver, the pen name for Gary Goshgarian, who has penned eight bestsellers. The result is this page-turner, Choose Me.
Because Goshgarian is a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, I’m guessing the plot for this mystery, set among academia at the fictional Commonwealth University, was crafted by him. Taryn is one of a dozen students in Professor Dorian’s seminar, entitled “Star-Crossed Lovers,” a course designed to “entice jaded college seniors to read The Aeneid, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, Medea, or Romeo and Juliet.” Taryn readily warms to the topic, impressing Jack with her insights about the women. Fresh from her rejection from Liam, Taryn is hungry for approval. When Jack compliments her on a paper she wrote about Medea, giving her an A+, she interprets his interest as something more than just professor to student.
For his part, Jack is feeling needy, too. His wife, Maggie, is an overworked doctor, seemingly always on call and often too tired to have sex. When her father, Charlie, a retired police officer, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, her attention shifts to him, leaving Jack even more on the outside. It’s not surprising that Jack and Taryn attend an out of town conference together and end up in bed. While Jack wants to write it off as a one time mistake, Taryn is not about to let him go.
The story is told from three points of view – Jack’s, Taryn’s, and Frankie’s. The narrative alternates between “Before” and “After” the murder, the pieces slowly falling into place.
Taryn is beautiful and smart and, in the beginning, we feel for her. Coming from a small town in Maine, raised by a single mother who holds several jobs to keep a roof over their heads, Taryn is an easy target for the rich girls who mock her. While Liam dated her in high school, he had no intention to marry against the wishes of his wealthy family. Taryn’s actions manipulating Jack are fueled by the women whose stories she reads, particularly Medea, who refuses to become a victim.
Choose Me flips the theme in the “MeToo” era, where blame lands squarely on the men. Here, Taryn is the aggressor, Jack the hapless victim. But when the killer is finally caught and states that women like Taryn need to be stopped, Frankie, the mother of two head-strong daughters, notes that the world would not be better off without “women whose turbulent emotions and desperate choices complicate the lives of men.”
Besides a compelling mystery, the team of Gerritsen and Braver have produced a thought-provoking novel that may even have readers encouraged to read about some of those women in Jack’s seminar.
Choose Me
Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver
Top photo: Bigstock
