‘Fragile’ straddles suspense, family tale

August 13, 2010|Karen Campbell, Globe Correspondent

Best-selling author Lisa Unger has made her mark with a string of successful thrillers — “Beautiful Lies,’’ “Black Out,’’ and “Die for You.’’ While her new novel, “Fragile,’’ has a mystery (or three) and often unfurls with page-turning suspense, it also mines the more intimate territory of family and community dynamics, inspired by the disappearance and murder of one of Unger’s own schoolmates more than two decades ago. It makes for a compelling yarn somewhat mired in psychosocial explication that is not altogether convincing.

In the style of Jodi Picoult, “Fragile’’ tells its tale through the real-time action and freighted recollections of a diverse cast of characters living in fictional The Hollows, a small town 100 miles outside New York City with a reputation for quaint charm. In reality, The Hollows is rife with dysfunction, full of “ugly memories and buried secrets.’’

Yet no one seems to leave, creating an atmosphere that is as claustrophobic as it is tightly knit. All the mid-generation adults seemed defined and trapped by their childhood personas. “The three of them — the pretty cheerleader, the sexy burnout, too knowing for her age, the geek with gothic leanings — they were all there, these representatives of the perennial high school subcultures, squirming and pink beneath the shells of their adulthood.’’ They watch their children grow up, often bearing the scars of their parents’ flaws.

The central character is Maggie, a wise, compassionate psychologist living with two loving but private, often angry men — her rebellious teenage son, Ricky, and her cop husband, Jones. The central plot is the abrupt disappearance of Ricky’s girlfriend Charlene, “the resident gothic queen, singer in Ricky’s band . . . a talented, intelligent girl, artistic and wise beyond her years.’’ Her father died when she was only 2, leaving her with her neurotic mother Melody, whose new husband, Graham, begins acting “inappropriately’’ when the marriage starts to sour, around the time Char starts to blossom at age 14. Both Ricky and Graham become possible suspects as Jones begins to investigate the case.

For residents of The Hollows, Char’s disappearance recalls another tragedy nearly 20 years earlier, when a talented young violinist went missing and was later found raped and mutilated. “Sarah was forever defined by the way she died. She was every parent’s nightmare, a warning, a cautionary tale. She was proof that everything parents feared was possible, even in this quiet, not quite suburban, not quite rural town.’’