Synopsis:
“They found the bodies on a Tuesday.”
So begins the story of the Pine family.
After a night of partying, New York University student Matt Pine returns to his dormitory room and receives devastating news. Nearly his entire family — his mother, father, sister, and little brother — were found dead while vacationing in Mexico. Ostensibly, an undetected gas leak killed them. So the local police rule their deaths accidental. The FBI and State Department seem far less certain about that conclusion . . . but won’t tell Matt why.
The tragedy makes headlines, but it isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny, is serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend, Charlotte, and was the subject of a true crime documentary. The filmmakers theorized that Danny was wrongfully convicted. And many people rallied behind Danny.
Matt harbors a secret about the night Charlotte died, Matt witnessed something that convinced him his brother is guilty. But he has never shared what he saw, in part because his father has been obsessed with amassing evidence proving Danny’s innocence.
When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he confronts hostility from a community that was villainized in the documentary. Amid the ensuing media frenzy, he’s assaulted by memories he hoped to leave behind forever.
And as his family’s deaths increasingly appear suspicious and somehow connected to Danny’s case, Matt searches for the truth about the crime that sent his brother to prison and thrust his family into a spotlight they never craved. In the process, his own life is in danger . . . and he is forced to face his every last fear.
Review:
Alex Finlay is the pseudonym adopted by Washington, D.C. appellate attorney Anthony Franze, who has penned two legal thrillers, The Advocate’s Daughter and The Outsider. Every Last Fear is an absorbing, heartbreaking thriller, at the center of which is a young film student who has to come to terms with the death of his parents and two siblings. Finlay describes it as a tale that is, at its heart, a story about a family torn apart and brought back together by tragedy.
Finlay says inspiration for the story struck when he inadvertently booked himself into an eco-hotel in Tulum, Mexico. His thoughts went to how disconcerting it would be to find oneself in a woodland, even in a safe place. In the dark, listening to the sounds of the jungle, Finlay relates that he ended up watching true-crime documentaries, “so murder was on my mind.” He also happened upon a news story about the suspicious deaths of tourists. He says, “Around midnight I tapped out the first line — They found the bodies on a Tuesday — and then the chapter about a family being discovered in an isolated Tulum rental dead from an apparent gas leak. But was it really a gas leak?”
On a chilly April morning, Matt Pine has just finished a game of chess with Reggie, the homeless man with whom he has been playing for two years in the West Village’s Washington Square Park. It is the last bit of relative normalcy he enjoys before learning that FBI agents are looking for him at his dormitory. Soon he is informed that his mother, father, sister Maggie, and younger brother Tommy, are all dead. Agent Sarah Keller tells him their deaths are believed to be the result of “a freak accident, a gas leak.” So why are both the FBI’s financial crimes personnel and State Department “working on” the case?
The story of the Pine family is related in alternating third-person narratives, one set in the present and the other the past, from the perspectives of the various family members. Finlay says it was a challenge, the trickiest part being “trying to ensure readers could invest in key characters who they know are dead — we’ll see if I pulled it off.” The effort does not show — he pulls it off convincingly and movingly. Also interspersed are excerpts of transcripts of the documentary about the case that sent Danny to prison, serving a life sentence for the murder of his high school girlfriend, Charlotte. Matt was only fourteen when Danny was convicted, and little Tommy had not yet been born. Matt thinks of that time as “Year Zero for the Pines,” measuring everything in terms of before and after Charlotte. Learning about his family’s deaths establishes a new “Year Zero” for Matt, as it falls to him to visit Danny in prison for the very first time and inform him in person.
Matt knew that his family suddenly decided to vacation in Mexico, but not that the trip was inspired by a video message sent to his father, Evan, that convinced him Charlotte was alive, frightened, and in need of help. Matt hadn’t spoken to his father since Christmas when they again quarreled. When Charlotte’s body was found, she was unrecognizable and Evan does not believe she was identified using DNA. Every day, something sets Evan off on a new trail, motivating him to keep searching for clues to Danny’s innocence. He is obsessed with getting Danny’s conviction reversed. While conducting research for the book, Finlay was shocked to learn how often people — especially teenagers — are wrongfully convicted because they confess to crimes they didn’t actually commit.
Maggie humors her father while reminding him that video footage can be manipulated. The message came from the Moloko Bar in Tulum, a vacation mecca on Mexico’s eastern coast. Although Evan has financial problems he has not confessed to his wife, Olivia, he tells Maggie that when her mother and little brother return from a trip to their hometown in Nebraska to deal with Olivia’s elderly father, the four of them are heading to Mexico. Maggie has been victimized by Eric, an unscrupulous boy at school who posted a horrifying video online after feigning interest in her. She is again pulled to assist her father because his quest is the only thing that returns optimism and light to his eyes, and they bond over the ongoing investigation.
Finlay has crafted a clever, deftly-plotted story about a family beset and challenged by unspeakably horrific events. They love each other, but are keeping secrets from one another. In addition to Evan’s financial woes, Olivia has kept something from Evan that could have far-reaching consequences for the entire family. And Maggie has not revealed that she is being cyber-bullied. Matt has kept his own battles with loneliness and his temper to himself. After the family moved to Chicago from Nebraska, hoping for a fresh start when Matt got into a fight at school, he has mostly managed to hide that side of himself, with the exception of one night at a party when he punched a fraternity boy who made a comment to his girlfriend, Jane. “How alone he’d felt carrying around the truth about his brother, watching his father and sister spin their wheels trying to prove Danny’s innocence.”
As one narrative describes Matt’s return to Nebraska to bury his family and his encounters with the residents of the small town they left behind, another details the family trip to Mexico and search for Charlotte. When Matt learns that it appears his family members were murdered, he decides that he survived in order to find out what happened to them. And journeys to Mexico in search of answers, anticipating assistance and cooperation from Mexican officials that does not materialize. He realizes that he is on his own, and remains determined to learn the truth, even as it becomes clear that his life is in danger.
The story progresses at a steady pace, never slowing or losing dramatic momentum, but accelerates once Matt arrives in Mexico. From that point on, clues and revelations come at perfectly-timed intervals that make it virtually impossible to stop reading. While revealing their flaws and difficulties, Finlay also makes the characters, particularly Maggie and Matt, sympathetic and endearing by illustrating that since “Year Zero” they have all just been doing their best to carry on. Matt, in particular, is blessed with an eclectic and entertaining group of supportive, devoted college friends who bolster and uplift him as he navigates his grief and need for answers. When all is finally revealed, it is evident that Finlay has constructed a tautly plausible and coherent story. And, through the inclusion of the documentarian characters and depiction of the media’s interest in Matt’s family, offers an insightful look at the myriad ways in which public interest and the attendant publicity can intrude upon family struggles and tragedies in the interest of advancing an agenda. Finlay observes that documentaries can educate and inform, but also result in “backlash against entire towns, [and] individuals being convicted on social media without due process.”
Full of plot twists and shocking, emotionally jarring developments, readers of Every Last Fear will feel their hearts shattering for the Pine family. And pondering what they would do and what extreme measures they might employ if they became convinced a loved one was wrongly convicted of a horrendous crime. For Evan Pine, the answer was clear, as he told the filmmakers. “You have two choices when you’re confronted with your every last fear: Give up or fight like hell.”
Also by Alex Finlay:
Writing as Anthony Franze:
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