All The Dangerous Things by Stacey Willingham

All The Dangerous Things was my second book by Stacy Willingham and true to her form and expectations, her sophomore effort is once again, a runaway winner for me.

Another dark psychological thriller with twists and turns galore, in All The Dangerous - Stacy gives us a heart wrenching story about guilt & grief . This is the story of Isabelle Drake, a mother whose eighteen month old baby has been kidnapped. While this is definitely one of the most high profile cases of this Southern city, a year after the incident, there are still no clues about this crime. It remains unsolved and Isabelle, racked with inconsolable grief and guilt at having lost her baby, has insomnia now. She hasn’t slept a wink during the last 364 nights, even as we open the story.

The story cleverly applies a dual storyline plot device, frequently flashing back to her childhood spent in the South Carolina city of Beaufort and her tight bond with her younger sister Margaret and her childhood condition of Sleepwalking. It also frequently takes the reader back into the life of an adult Isabelle, and her growing fascination and subsequent romance with her co-worker and chief editor of the lifestyle magazine she joins as her first independent job after college. This forms a pivotal part of that puzzle as we get to know her husband, Ben and their relationship starting from their courtship time and Isabelle's own life leading up to the point where their son, Mason gets kidnapped.

In the present narrative, a still hopeful Isabelle also befriends this podcast maker, Weylan on a plane after a “crime con” address where she has just told her true crime story of her life to these crime obsessed fans. Weylan convinces Isabelle to be a part of his podcast show after he proves that he’s helped solve many cold cases. And then, strangely enough, during one of her sleepless night walks with her dog, Isabelle runs into a new neighbour who could potentially have seen what happened that night of the crime. With renewed hope and increasingly intriguing new clues, Isabelle plunges back to solving the crime that has shattered her own life.

Like in her previous book, Stacy gives us an unreliable narrator - suffering from acute delusions due to her current condition ( insomnia) which lets Stacy lead the readers astray down dark, unfinished alleyways. Throw around quite a few false leads with startling conviction. Then there’s that dark secretive childhood trauma, which may or may not have influenced the actions in her own adult life. There’s also the secretive neighbour. And of course that suspicious new friend who glides into her own life so easily. And as always, there’s something shifty and dark about her own husband. Isabelle is a complex character, buried under a mountain of self-guilt, and yet determined and clever by turns. She felt authentic and while not the most endearing lead, she made me want to stick with her to see this ordeal through. The supporting cast of the new friend, the husband and others were well etched out, playing their parts to fill out the puzzle.

Suffice to say, all these ingredients make All the Dangerous Things a compulsive page-turner as we frantically leap from one clue to the other. Having read her first book, I can possibly claim that I saw a few things early on but I won't spoil the suspense here. It's a deftly plotted book and like a great story, keeps us immersed in the frantic, sometimes delusional thoughts-whirlpool of the lead, Isabelle. It takes us deep into the vortex of failed relationships, and broken families. The past-tense narrative that takes us back to Isabelle's childhood and the mysteries surrounding it, is nicely set up and unfurls, keeping that nerve-wracking tension intact. The pacing is a bit slower as we trudge past those memories, the guilt and the set-up for the overall mystery before things heat up and we are flung from one clue to the other.

All in all, a fabulous stay-up-all-night binge-read psychological thriller with a great souther-spooky-small town atmosphere. Full points to Stacy on giving us yet another winning story.