#Titanuary ‘The Passenger’ by Lisa Lutz

About the book…

Tanya DuBois doesn’t exist. At least not after an accident leaves her husband dead and thrusts her into the uncomfortably familiar position of Suspect No. 1. She has only one choice: Run.

As “Tanya” watches her life recede in the rearview mirror, we realize she was never real to begin with. And neither is Amelia Keen, Debra Maze, Emma Lark, Sonia Lubovich, or a girl called only Jo. Or almost any of the things she tells us about herself, her past or where she is going next. She is “Amelia” when she meets Blue, another woman with a life she’d rather not discuss, and thinks she’s found a kindred spirit. But their pasts and futures clash as the body count rises around them.

Shedding identities like snakeskins, it becomes impossible for the people in Tanya’s life – and even herself – to know exactly who they’re dealing with. It’s only as she comes closer to facing her past that she can start to piece together the truth about not only who she was but who she can still be. ‘The Passenger’ inverts the traditional thriller, bypassing whodunit for the larger mysteries of who are you, and what is forgivable, and what is not?

The Passenger is an inalienable sense of accountability and guilt that first person narrator, Tanya (and she is only Tanya for a short while) has on her shoulders from the very start.

By the end of chapter 1, you have questions, BOY do you have questions as her husband’s body is doscovered, Tanya goes on the run, and you go with her, wanting to know from the tiny, dropped clues, just what has happened to this woman!

Who is Frank, did he die by accident or was he, himself, murdered?

As Tanya goes on the run, ringing up mysterious associates who quickly acquire for her the necessary i.d to continue running, your mind is doing all sorts of acrobatics and you know there will be no sleep until the last page has turned. Lisa Lutz reels you in, and keeps on reeling as she reveals, little by little, just what is waiting in Tanya’s rear view mirror.

It is not until she comes across a woman, not so unlike herself that she realises she is being irretrievably drawn into her world, the world of Blue, a woman who,. like her-we are to suppose-has escaped and is not using her rea name either.

Having no time to ask questions before the next hit comes, and then the next, you feel that you are on a white knuckle ride with two feral animals who are circling each other, cautious and wary because of things which have happened to them, never letting their guard down because when they do, people die.

There are clues dotted throughout the story to help you gauge these characters of Tanya (sorry she is Tanya to me as that is how she begins the same as Blue, who is not really Blue, but is when you meet her, stays Blue. If you get my drift).

The treadmill of their lives , where they are not strictly going anywhere, mentally, yet are travelling far and fast,  physically, just paradoxically intensifies the thriller aspect of a novel which asks you to not think too hard, go with them and try to remember to breathe.

We, the readers, are in a sense, the passengers also as we are being taken for a ride and trusting that Lisa Lutz will deliver us safely at the journey’s end. Or, for some of us, preferring that she doesn’t and leaves us dangling at the end of a rope of supposition over a canyon of doubt.

A superb thriller which will have me eagerly reaching for her other Titan title, The Swallows, this is a novel so sharp it may leave you with paper cuts.

About the author…

Lisa Lutz is the New York Times bestselling author of the six books in the Spellmans series, ‘How To Start A Fire’, ‘Heads You Lose’ (with David Hayward), and the children’s book, ‘How To Negotiate Everything’ (illustrated by Jaime Temairik). . Lutz has won the Alex award and has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Although she attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England, and San Francisco State University, she still does not have a bachelor’s degree. Lisa spent most of the 1990s hopping through a string of low-paying odd jobs while writing and rewriting the screenplay Plan B, a mob comedy. After the film was made in 2000, she vowed she would never write another screenplay. Lisa lives in the Hudson Valley, NY.

Links-http://lisalutz.com/

Twitter @lisalutz @TitanBooks