‘The Note’ by Alafair Burke

Published by Faber & Faber,
24 April 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-57139302-2 (PB)

Three friends on a weekend seaside jolly in a rented house. A selfish driver who steals their parking place and smirks about it. A revenge note on his windscreen, designed to make his companion look at him askance. All fuelled by too much alcohol. Just a joke, some fun at the selfish man’s expense. Or so you’d think. 

Then they spot a Missing Person poster – and it’s the same man. They decide to disclaim all knowledge; they know nothing about his disappearance, after all, and their note isn’t even mentioned. But the police are involved, and a body turns up, and suddenly things start to grow a whole lot darker and more complicated. And that’s when the note takes on a deeper significance, and skeletons start to tumble pell-mell out of the cupboard.

The three, May, Lauren and Kelsey, go back a long way, right to adolescence, when they attended the same music summer camp. Now in their thirties, they have followed very different paths. Lauren, a few years older, was the camp director, and is the only one who has pursued a career in music. May is a lawyer, and Kelsey has joined her father’s flourishing real estate business.

It’s all set against a background of privilege. Kelsey’s family is wealthy; Lauren’s career has earned her a more than comfortable life; even May, child of a single parent who had to work hard for everything she achieved, has pulled herself out of poverty. Their weekend is in the Hamptons, playground of the rich, and they don’t stint on expensive food and wine. But can money buy happiness, is a question which lurks in the undergrowth.

The three women emerge as very different personalities, as sharply drawn as Alafair Burke’s many fans have come to expect. Lauren is calm and organized, very much the grown-up of the trio, but with secrets of her own. May was once a hotshot prosecutor, but has become nervy, a little obsessive, and unsure of herself. Kelsey was always the party girl, lively and bubbly, but she, too, is now more uptight and cautious. The reason becomes plain; both May and Kelsey have been subjected to that curse of the age of technology: trial by social media.

The novel is as much about the dangers which lurk online as the three friends’ unwilling involvement in a murder investigation which throws light on the dark places in their past, both recent and further off. May’s incisive legal mind leads her down some twisted paths which may or may not lead to the truth about the murder. Is the killer some random unknown figure, or is he or she closer at hand? Is May making wise decisions? Above all, will their friendship of twenty-plus years survive? Start reading, and you won’t want to stop until you know the answers.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Alafair Burke is a graduate of Stanford Law School and a former Deputy District Attorney in Portland, Oregon, she is now a Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School, where she teaches criminal law and procedure.  She is the author of “two power house series” (Sun-Sentinel) that have earned her a reputation for creating strong, believable, and eminently likable female characters, such as NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Portland Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Alafair’s novels grow out of her experience as a prosecutor in America’s police precincts and criminal courtrooms, and have been featured by The Today Show, People Magazine, The New York Times, MSNBC, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Chicago Sun-Times.

http://alafairburke.com   

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.