Synopsis:
One year ago, Isabelle Drake’s life changed forever. Her toddler son, Mason, was taken out of his crib in the middle of the night while she and her husband slept in the next room. With little evidence and few leads for the Savannah, Georgia, police to follow up, the case quickly went cold.
But Isabelle is a desperate mother who cannot rest until Mason is returned to her. Literally.
Except for an occasional catnap or brief blackout during which she loses track of time and her activities, she hasn’t really slept in a year.
Isabelle’s entire existence now revolves around finding her son. But she knows she can’t go on this way forever.
Hoping to uncover a new witness or overlooked clue, she agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster, even though his interest in Isabelle’s past makes her nervous. His incessant questioning, paired with her severe insomnia, has brought up uncomfortable memories from her own childhood, making Isabelle start to doubt her recollection of the night of Mason’s disappearance. And second-guess who she can trust . . . including herself.
Isabelle is determined to figure out the truth . . . no matter where or to whom it leads.
Review:
Willingham grew up in a happy family watching The Twilight Zone, Colombo, Alfred Hitchcock, and other mystery television series, and reading mysteries like The Witches by Roald Dahl with which she was “enthralled.” She admits having a “fascination with dysfunctional families,” based on the fact that “you can’t choose your family. These terrible situations like Chloe (in A Flicker in the Dark) and Isabelle are in? They didn’t choose that. Yet that’s kind of what life handed them. And so how would you make the most of it? How would you deal with it? And how would it affect who you are as a person?”
The inspiration for All the Dangerous Things was an idea that came to Willingham one day. “What would it feel like to be trapped inside the mind of a sleep-deprived mother who, deep down, believed that the disappearance of her child was somehow her fault?” Not yet a mother herself, Willingham says she pondered why a mother would feel that way until she realized that women and, in particular, mothers, “are conditioned from birth to feel guilty about something. We always think things are our fault. We always feel the need to apologize: for being too much or too little. Too loud or too quiet. Too driven or too content. For wanting children more than anything or for not even wanting them all.” Willingham confesses that she was afraid to pen a book focused on motherhood, so she did a lot of research on the subject. And was dismayed to discover that many women don’t express their emotions because of the guilt they feel about experiencing them. Which is actually tragic because their emotions are largely universal. “We feel completely alone in an experience that’s shared by so many,” Willingham observes, which propelled her to create the variety of female characters featured in All the Dangerous Things who are “flawed, complicated, messy . . .”
In a compelling first-person narrative, Isabelle Drake reveals at the outset of the story that her life changed exactly one year ago when her son, Mason, was kidnapped. And — unimaginably — during that year, she has not had “a single night of rest.” Despite trying sleeping pills, eye drops, caffeine, and therapy, Isabelle is only able to “microsleep” for two to twenty seconds at a time, so she has been “stumbling through life in a semiconscious dream state” for a full three hundred and sixty-four days. Nonetheless, she is still “no closer to the truth.” She is a wreck — physically and mentally.
Although it is emotionally draining for her, Isabelle travels to true crime conferences and conventions at which she speaks about Mason’s unsolved case. She does it because she hopes that an audience member might be able to shed light on Mason’s whereabouts and, in exchange for her participation, is provided a list of the attendees’ names and addresses. When she returns home, she studies those lists and researches the backgrounds of her audience members in search of even the most attenuated clues.
Willingham also performed extensive research on sleepwalking and found that about one-third of children sleepwalk at some point during their childhood. And about two percent of them continue doing so in adulthood. Isabelle explains that she has always been a heavy sleeper and, as a child, sleepwalked from time to time. Now, suffering from severe insomnia, she recalls moments from her childhood for which she lacks a cogent explanation. She grew up in a house near a marsh, and there were nights when she woke up disoriented, confused. Inexplicably, there were muddy footprints on the carpet. Her younger sister, Margaret, mysteriously drowned in the marsh one night. Mason’s stuffed dinosaur was found on the banks of the marsh near their home. Isabelle is haunted by the “similarities between then and now” and “the icy silence from my parents that never seems to melt.” (She is virtually estranged from her parents, although they do send her checks that she is loath to cash, even though she needs the money to cover her living expenses so that she can keep searching for Mason.) The detective assigned to the case has always made her uncomfortable because, of course, when Mason went missing, both she and her husband, Ben, immediately came and have remained under suspicion.
Unlike Isabelle, Ben quickly moved on with his life after Mason disappeared. He bought a condominium near his office, leaving Isabelle in the house they shared, and is in a new romantic relationship. Isabelle describes how they met, worked together after Ben hired her, and married quickly after his first wife’s tragic suicide. She details their journey to parenthood, and how their marriage began falling apart before Mason was born, and collapsed fully under the strain of Mason’s kidnapping.
She meets Waylon Spencer on a flight home from a conference at which she again related her story. He explains that his popular podcast led to the closure of a cold case and, despite her misgivings, she contacts him later and agrees to grant him access to all the information she has amassed about Mason’s case . . . and her life. As he interviews her for the podcast and his inquiries grow increasingly intrusive and accusatory, Isabelle grows increasingly suspicious of Waylon and his motives. Is he really an ally?
The centerpiece of the story is Isabelle’s fear that she may have harmed her own child. After all, one of her neighbors insists that he observed her walking past his house in the middle of the night, but she has no recollection of doing so. She reviews every moment of the video footage from the baby monitor in Mason’s room to see if she entered his room during the night while he was sleeping but was eft with no memory of doing so. She believed her sleepwalking stopped when she was in college. But has she continued to sleepwalk, right up to the night Mason was taken? She doubts herself even to the point of pondering whether she might be capable of homicidal sleepwalking, an exceedingly rare, but scientifically documented phenomenon. Her therapist explains that it is possible for sleepwalkers to do “terrible things, that they would never do if they were awake. They can’t differentiate between right and wrong” because the upper frontal lobe of the brain is asleep during sleepwalking.
Willingham deftly portrays a woman terrified by the possibility that she lost control over her own behavior to the point that she harmed her own child. She loved Mason more than anything, and cannot really conceive that she could be capable of such a heinous act. She is desperate to find any other plausible explanation, any scrap of evidence that will lead her to answers and, hopefully, her son — alive and well. But her guilt is not so limited. Because she is his mother and it was her job to protect Mason, and she feels the judgment of everyone in her life, as well as many of those strangers who listen to her relate the story at those conferences and conventions. After all, Mason’s bedroom window was open; the batteries in the baby monitor were dead. She also feels guilt about her feelings prior to Mason’s kidnapping. Being a full-time mother can be an isolating and disappointing experience, especially for a woman who had a successful career as a journalist an misses working and having a social life, as well as a husband who found her interesting and desirable. And there is the strain of being constantly and relentlessly needed and depended upon by your child. It is fear, guilt, and ruminating about the past that keep Isabelle from sleeping, and she knows time is running out because human beings cannot survive without sleep indefinitely. She is conscious of the fact that she is becoming increasingly paranoid, and unable to discern what is real from what she imagines.
All the Dangerous Things is a tautly-crafted, tense, and absorbing mystery that is, at times, difficult to read. Because as Willingham examines her protagonist’s deepest fears, Isabelle is relatable and empathetic. After all, the idea of being so out of control and beyond one’s moral boundaries that one could be capable of committing unspeakable acts is horrifying and terrifying. Isabelle’s angst and self-doubt are palpable and affecting, even as Willingham inspires readers to view her with suspicion while injecting clues to Mason’s whereabouts at expertly-timed intervals. Isabelle is surrounded by other female characters who are empathetic and compelling, especially Isabelle’s mother whose story Willingham unravels compassionately. The mystery around which Isabelle’s misery revolves is plausibly constructed, and the conclusion shocking. All the Dangerous Things is almost suffocatingly atmospheric, which heightens the dramatic tension. It is engrossing, solidly entertaining, and ideal for readers who enjoy slow-burning mysteries.
Excerpt from All the Dangerous Things
CHAPTER ONE
NOW
“Isabelle, you’re on in five.”
My pupils are drilling into a spot in the carpet. A spot with no significance, really, other than the fact that my eyes seem to like it here. My surroundings grow fuzzy as the spot—my spot—gets sharper, clearer. Like tunnel vision.
“Isabelle.”
I wish I could always have tunnel vision: the ability to selectively focus on one single thing at a time. Turn everything else into static. White noise.
“Isabelle.”
Snap snap.
There’s a hand in front of my face now, waving. Fingers clicking. It makes me blink.
“Earth to Isabelle.”
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head, as if the motion could somehow clear the fog like windshield wipers swiping at rain. I blink a few more times before trying to find the spot again, but it’s gone now. I know it’s gone. It’s melted back into the carpet, into oblivion, the way I wish I could. “Sorry, yeah. On in five.”
I lift my arm and take a sip of my Styrofoam cup of coffee—strong, black, squeaky when my chapped lips stick to the rim. I used to savor the taste of that daily morning cup. I lived for the smell of it wafting through my kitchen; the warmth of a mug pushed against my fingers, cold and stiff from standing on the back porch, watching the sun come up with morning dew beading on my skin.
But it wasn’t the coffee I needed, I know that now. It was the routine, the familiarity. Comfort-in-a-cup, like those dehydrated noodles you splash faucet water onto before popping them into the microwave and calling it a meal. But I don’t care about that anymore: comfort, routine. Comfort is a luxury I can no longer afford, and routine … well. I haven’t had that in a long time, either.
Now I just need the caffeine. I need to stay awake.
“On in two.”
I look up at the man standing before me, clipboard resting against his hip. I nod, down the rest of the coffee, and savor the bitter pinch in my jaw. It tastes like shit, but I don’t care. It’s doing its job. I dig my hand into my purse and pull out a bottle of eye drops—redness relief—and squirt three beads of liquid into each eye with expert precision. I guess this is my routine now. Then I stand up, run my hands over the front of my pants, and slap my palms against my thighs, signaling that I’m ready.
“If you’ll follow me.”
I hold out my arm, gesturing for the man to lead the way. And then I follow. I follow him out the door and through a dim hallway, the fluorescent lights buzzing in my ear like an electric chair humming to life. I follow him through another door, the gentle roar of applause erupting as soon as it opens and we step inside. I walk past him, to the edge of the stage, and stand behind a black curtain, the audience just barely obscured from view.
This is a big one. The biggest I’ve done.
I look down at my hands, where I used to hold notecards with talking points scribbled in pencil. Little bulleted instructions reminding me what to say, what not to say. How to order the story like I’m following a recipe, meticulous and careful, sprinkling the details in just right. But I don’t need those anymore. I’ve done this too many times.
Besides, there’s nothing new to say.
“And now we are ready to bring out the person I know you’re all here to see.”
I watch the man speaking onstage, ten feet away, his voice booming over the loudspeakers. It’s everywhere, it seems—in front of me, behind me. Inside me, somehow. Somewhere deep in my chest. The audience cheers again, and I clear my throat, remind myself why I’m here.
“Ladies and gentlemen of TrueCrimeCon, it is my honor to present to you, our keynote speaker … Isabelle Drake!”
I step into the light, walking with purpose toward the host as he signals me onstage. The crowd continues to yell, some of them standing, clapping, the beady little eyes of their iPhones pointed in my direction, taking me in, unblinking. I turn toward the audience, squinting at their silhouettes. My eyes adjust a bit, and I wave, smiling weakly before coming to a halt in the center.
The host hands me a microphone, and I grab it, nodding.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice sounding like an echo. “Thank you all for coming out this weekend. What an incredible bunch of speakers.”
The crowd erupts again, and I take the free seconds to scan the sea of faces the way I always do. It’s women, mostly. It’s always women. Older women in groups of five or ten, relishing this annual tradition—the ability to break away from their lives and their responsibilities and drown themselves in fantasy. Younger women, twentysomethings, looking skittish and a little embarrassed, like they’ve just been caught looking at porn. But there are men, too. Husbands and boyfriends who were dragged along against their will; the kind with wire-rimmed glasses and peach-fuzz beards and elbows that protrude awkwardly from their arms like knobby tree branches. There are the loners in the corner, the ones whose eyes linger just long enough to make you uncomfortable, and the police officers perusing the aisles, stifling yawns.
And then I notice the clothing.
One girl wears a graphic tee that says Red Wine and True Crime, the T in the shape of a gun; another sports a white shirt sprayed with specks of red—it’s supposed to mimic blood, I assume. Then I see a woman wearing a T-shirt that says Bundy. Dahmer. Gacy. Berkowitz. I remember walking past it earlier in the gift shop. It was clipped tight against a mannequin, being advertised in the same way they advertise overpriced band T-shirts in the merchandise tents at concerts, memorabilia for rabid fans.
I feel the familiar swell of bile in my throat, warm and sharp, and force myself to look away.
“As I’m sure you all know, my name is Isabelle Drake, and my son, Mason, was kidnapped one year ago,” I say. “His case is still unsolved.”
Chairs squeak; throats are cleared. A mousey woman in the front row is shaking her head gently, tears in her eyes. She is loving this right now, I know she is. It’s like she’s watching her favorite movie, mindlessly snacking on popcorn as her lips move gently, reciting every word. She’s heard my speech already; she knows what happened. She knows, but she still can’t get enough. None of them can. The murderers on the T-shirts are the villains; the uniformed men in back, the heroes. Mason is the victim … and I’m not really sure where that leaves me.
The lone survivor, maybe. The one with a story to tell.
CHAPTER TWO
I settle into my seat. The aisle seat. Generally, I prefer the window. Something to lean up against and close my eyes. Not to sleep, exactly. But to drift away for a while. Microsleeping, is what my doctor calls it. We’ve all seen it before, especially on airplanes: the twitching eyelids, the bobbing head. Two to twenty seconds of unconsciousness before your neck snaps back up with astonishing force like a cocking shotgun, ready to go.
I look at the seat to my right: empty. I hope it stays open. Takeoff is in twenty minutes; the gate is about to close. And when it does, I can move over. I can close my eyes.
I can try, as I’ve been trying for the last year, to finally get some rest.
“Excuse me.”
I jump, looking up at the flight attendant before me. She’s tapping the back of my seat, disapproval in her eyes.
“We’re going to need you to make sure your seat back is in the upright and locked position.”
I look back down, push the little silver button on my armrest, and feel my back begin to bend forward at an acute angle, my stomach folding in on itself. The attendant begins to walk away, pushing overhead compartments closed as she goes, when I reach out my arm and stop her.
“Can I bother you for a soda water?”
“We’ll begin beverage service as soon as we take off.”
“Please,” I add, grabbing her arm harder as she starts to step away. “If you wouldn’t mind. I’ve been talking all day.”
I touch my throat for emphasis, and she looks down the aisle at the other passengers squirming uncomfortably, adjusting their seat belts. Digging through backpacks for headphones.
“Fine,” she says, her lips pinched tight. “Just a moment.”
I smile, nod, and ease back into my seat before looking around the plane at the other passengers I’ll be sharing circulated air with for the next four hours as we make our way from Los Angeles to Atlanta. It’s a game I play, trying to imagine what they’re doing here. What life circumstances brought them to this exact moment, with this exact group of strangers. I wonder what they’ve been doing, or what they plan to do.
Are they going somewhere, or are they making their way home?
My eyes land first on a child sitting alone, giant headphones swallowing his ears. I imagine he’s a product of divorce, spending one weekend every month getting shuttled from one side of the country to the other like cargo. I feel myself starting to imagine how Mason might have looked at that age—how his green eyes could have morphed even greener, two twin emeralds twinkling like his father’s, or how his baby-smooth skin might have taken on the olive tone of my own, a natural tan without having to step foot in the sun.
I swallow hard and force myself to turn away, twisting to the left and taking in the others.
There are older men on laptops and women with books; teenagers on cell phones slouched low in their seats, gangly knees knocking into the seat backs in front of them. Some of these people are traveling to weddings or funerals; some are embarking on business trips or clandestine getaways paid for in cash. And some of these people have secrets. All of them do, really. But some of them have the real ones, the messy ones. The deep, dark, shadowy ones that lurk just beneath the skin, traveling through their veins and spreading like a sickness.
Dividing, multiplying, then dividing again.
I wonder which ones they are: the ones with the kinds of secrets that touch every organ and render them rotten. The kinds of secrets that will eat them alive from the inside out.
Nobody in here could possibly imagine what I’ve just spent my day doing: recounting the most painful moment of my life for the enjoyment of strangers. I have a speech now. A speech that I recite with absolute detachment, engineered in just the right way. Sound bites that I know will read well when ripped from my mouth and printed inside newspapers, and manufactured moments of silence when I want a point to sink in. Warm memories of Mason to break up a particularly tense scene when I’m sensing the need for some comedic relief. Just as I’m going deep into his disappearance—the open window I had discovered in his bedroom letting in a warm, damp breeze; the tiny mobile situated above his bed, little stuffed dinosaurs dancing gently in the wind—I stop, swallow. Then I recite the story of how Mason had just started talking. How he pronounced T. rex “Tyrantosnorious”—and how, every time he pointed at the little creatures above his bed, my husband would break out into exaggerated snores, sending him into a fit of giggles before drifting off himself. And then the audience would allow themselves to smile, maybe even laugh. There would be a visible release in their shoulders; their bodies would settle into their chairs again, a collectivly held breath released. Because that’s the thing with the audience, the thing I learned long ago: They don’t want to get too uncomfortable. They don’t want to actually live through what I’ve lived through, every ugly moment. They just want a taste. They want enough for their curiosity to be satiated—but if it gets too bitter or too salty or too real, they’ll smack their lips and leave dissatisfied.
And we don’t want that.
The truth is, people love violence—from a distance, that is. Anyone who disagrees is either in denial or hiding something.
“Your soda water.”
I look up at the flight attendant’s outstretched arm. She’s holding a small cup of clear liquid, little bubbles rising to the surface and bursting with a satisfying fizz.
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from her and placing it in my lap.
“You’ll need to keep your tray table stowed,” she adds. “We’ll be in the air soon.”
I smile, taking a small sip to indicate that I understand. When she walks off, I lean down, digging my hand into my purse until I feel a mini bottle tucked neatly into the side pocket. I’m attempting to discreetly unscrew the cap when I feel a presence beside me, hovering close.
“This is me.”
My neck snaps up, and I’m half expecting to see somebody I know. There’s a familiarity in the voice above me, vague, like a casual acquaintance, but when I look up at the man standing in the aisle, I see a stranger with a TrueCrimeCon tote bag slung over one arm, the other pointing to the seat beside me.
The window seat.
He sees the mini bottle in my hand and grins. “I won’t tell.”
“Thanks,” I say, standing up to let him pass through.
I try not to glower at the prospect of being stuck next to an attendee on the fight home—it’s complicated, really, the way I feel about the fans. I hate them, but I need them. They’re a necessary evil: their eyes, their ears. Their undivided attention. Because when the rest of the world forgets, they remember. They still read every article, debating their theories on amateur sleuth forums as if my life is nothing more than a fun puzzle to be solved. They still curl up on their couches with a glass of Merlot in the evenings, getting lost in the comforting drone of Dateline. Trying to experience it without actually experiencing it. And that’s why events like TrueCrimeCon exist. Why people spend hundreds of dollars on airfare and hotel rooms and conference tickets: for a safe space where they can bask in the bloody glow of violence for just a few days, using another person’s murder as a means of entertainment.
But what they don’t understand, what they can’t understand, is that one day, they could wake up to find the violence crawling through their television screens, latching on to their houses, their lives, like a parasite sinking in its fangs. Wriggling in deep, making itself comfortable. Sucking the blood from their bodies and calling them home.
People never think it’ll happen to them.
The man glides past me and into his seat, pushing his bag beneath the chair in front of him. When I settle back in, I pick up where I left off: the gentle crack of the cap breaking, the glug of vodka as it pours into my drink. I stir it with my finger before taking a long sip.
“I saw your keynote.”
I can feel my seatmate looking at me. I try to ignore him, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the headrest. Waiting for the vodka to make my eyelids just heavy enough to stay closed for a bit.
“I’m so sorry,” he adds.
“Thank you,” I say, eyes still shut. Even though I can’t actually sleep, I can act like I’m sleeping.
“You’re good, though,” he continues. I can feel his breath on my cheek, smell the spearmint gum wedged between his molars. “At telling the story, I mean.”
“It’s not a story,” I say. “It’s my life.”
He’s quiet for a while, and I think that did it. I usually try not to make people uncomfortable—I try to be gracious, play the role of the grieving mother. Shaking hands and nodding my head, a grateful smile plastered across my face that I immediately wipe away like lipstick the second I step away. But right now I’m not at the conference. It’s over, I’m done. I’m going home. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
I hear the intercom come to life above us, a scratchy echo.
“Flight attendants, prepare doors for departure and cross-check.”
“I’m Waylon,” the man says, and I can feel his arm thrust in my direction. “Waylon Spencer. I have a podcast—”
I open my eyes and look in his direction. I should have known. The familiar voice. The fitted V-neck and dark-wash skinny jeans. He doesn’t look like the typical attendee, with his glossy hair shaved into a sloping gradient at the neck. He’s not into murder for entertainment; he’s in it for business.
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