Vic, Joan’s married lover, shoots himself in front of her while she has dinner with the man who replaced him.

Quite the opening. Vic, was Joan’s boss but she never loved him, hated having sex with him. The reason she continued the affair was that she used him as a sounding board, a safety blanket. She felt comfortable knowing that he would always be there.

Far from a paragon of virtue, Joan by her own admission is ‘depraved’, however, with this novel, she is not on her own. The novel is full of infidelity and characters with dubious morality. Joan has had a hard, traumatic life. At the age of 10 she was sexually abused by a stranger and one night came home to find her mother had killed her father and then slit her own wrists. The overt reason for this bloodbath, is Joan’s father was having an affair. Did these episodes from Joan’s past turn her into the woman she is today?

Vic’s suicide in the restaurant brings these memories crashing back and Joan leaves New York for Los Angeles in search of a woman named Alice. For reasons undisclosed to the reader, Joan believes that Alice will be able to help her understand a little more about her parents and that terrible night. The two women become fast friends when Vic’s wife calls Joan to tell her that her daughter is on her way to Los Angeles to kill her for her father’s suicide and ruining their life.

That is the story in a nutshell but there is a significant amount of depth with the narrative revolving around the trauma and fallout that results from these damaged broken relationships. The supporting characters are a little shallow and one dimensional, but the character of Joan, as dark and depraved as she is, carries this novel.

Reviewed by Neale Lucas