(3.5/5 stars) An engaging commentary on wealth and political corruption in the form of a thriller.
Catamount Bluff, a small yet exclusive gated community overlooking the ocean, drips wealth and political power. Though only separated from the rest of Hubbard’s Point—a seaside Connecticut town—by a long gravel road and an imposing gate, Catamount Bluff is an entirely different world of darkness and deception.
Luanne Rice’s thriller The Shadow Box slowly reveals more and more of this deadly corruption through the eyes of Claire Beaudry Chase, the mayor’s wife. It opens with Claire waking up alone in a pool of her own blood in her garage after an attempted murder, convinced that her husband was the one to nearly stab her to death and leave her to die. From this heart-wrenching beginning, Rice pulls the reader in with a detailed yet fast-moving plot.
We get most of the story through Claire’s eyes as she seeks vengeance against her husband, Griffin. Yet with much of the police force being under Griffin’s thumb and his far-stretching web of allies, Claire doesn’t know who to trust or where to turn. We also get the perspective of Conor Reid, a detective with the Connecticut police department, who is perplexed by Claire’s disappearance as the disappearance of another Hubbard’s Point family. Through the book, Claire and Conor slowly peel back the façade of Catamount Bluff and discover the twisted alliances, deadly enmities, and complex plots behind the bloodshed.
Claire and Conor are both objectively good—but not great—characters. Character development is not the crown jewel of The Shadow Box—Rice doesn’t really give either character any flaws, leaving them both rather dull and two-dimensional. Similarly, Griffin, the antagonist, is purely, stereotypically evil. He even has Ted-Bundy-esque eyes that change color; I eventually tired of reading things like, “His eyes glared straight into me, and they changed color from pale green to pure black.” I don’t think that the book needs this exaggerated detail to show that Griffin is a psychopath—that was never a doubt. I personally found the good/evil dichotomy of this book a little simplistic and preferred the morally gray minor characters. Though the main characters’ personalities were dull, I found that the complex, interesting situations the characters were in almost made up for this.
The plot was truly the highlight of the book. Rice’s book is jam-packed with little details that paint an engaging picture of mystery and keep the reader guessing. I also really enjoyed how Rice used flashbacks to add a multidimensional aspect to the reader’s journey. While the number of characters, significant details, and diverse relationships can get overwhelming, this complexity adds to the reading experience; it means that you have a new theory or question every few pages.
One virtue of Rice’s plot is how she comments on domestic abuse. Using flashbacks, the reader learns about the beginning of Claire and Griffin’s relationship and how it developed from being emotionally abusive to verbally abusive to eventually physically abusive. Claire expresses her conflicting feelings toward her husband and their marriage and speaks to the point when she realized that she was in an abusive relationship. Claire also discusses getting help as a domestic abuse survivor, and shedding effective light on these issues is a crucial part of the book.
Another unique aspect of The Shadow Box is how Rice ties art into the plot’s development. Claire is a professional artist who makes shadow boxes, and she uses her art as a vehicle for both self-expression, rebellion, and truth-telling. Even beyond the way the boxes drive the plot forward, it was interesting to read about how Claire makes her art.
However wonderful most of the plot was, I found the ending of the book to be a real letdown. I was expecting a grandiose twist or an unexpected betrayal, but the resolution felt far too predictable and neat. I felt as if Rice went too far in trying to wrap the book up in a digestible way, and it was ultimately a bit cheesy and left me feeling unsatisfied.
While The Shadow Box was an exciting read, its cookie-cutter ending and two-dimensional characters left something to be desired. Because of the quality of the bulk of the book, I expected the ending to meet the same high standard, but it fell far short. If you’re willing to put a predictable ending aside, however, The Shadow Box could be your next best thriller read.
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