Kate Bishop finds heart and poignancy at the center of her artfully crafted thriller, “High Season,” setting it apart from other by-the-numbers beach reads.
At the center of the story is Nina Drayton, who, 20 years ago at age 5, was the sole witness to the murder of her sister, Tamara, by Josie Jackson, the daughter of their family’s summer housekeeper and her childhood babysitter. Nina was brought up to believe that her account of that wine-soaked night at her mother’s French villa was the reason Josie was put away and justice served. After the case faces renewed interest from a true crime influencer, Nina begins to suspect that her story was faulty. At the same time, Josie returns to the scene of the crime searching for answers.
“High Season” has many moving parts — two timelines, five viewpoints in total — and it also manages to serve as an exploration of our true crime obsession. Bishop acknowledges the double-edged sword of armchair detecting: the interest brings attention to forgotten cases but also makes it impossible for anyone to move on from it under renewed scrutiny. The promise of justice is thinner than the promise of entertainment and gossip about a cast of suspects and victims, most of whom will never meet.
The POV shifts feel natural rather than jarring, jagged pieces of a story. Bishop knows when it makes sense to see the world through one character, and then, in the next chapter, add a piece of the puzzle from a different character. It serves as a reminder that everyone has their own story of what they believed happened the night of the murder and their reasons for hiding their suspicions for 20 years.
The most poignant parts of the novel are told by Tamara herself — Bishop could have easily made her victim another “poor little rich girl” by just having other people’s memories and judgements of her serve as her narrative. By giving Tamara her part of the story and making her a fleshed-out character, we feel the grief that comes with her death and the hole it’s made for so many people.
The novel also does a good job exploring how the glittering glamor of the Drayton family is out of reach for the working-class teenage girls in town, and the lengths they will go to try to fit in (or not) with the shiny elite. Josie’s teenage best friend, Hannah, has a crucial arc about the dangers of trying to shape yourself into someone else’s world at any cost. The treatment Hannah receives at the hands of Blake, Nina’s older brother, is chilling and an accurate depiction of how some men treat women they feel are beneath them.
The weak part of the novel is the climax of the truth coming out. It felt like an artificial set-up for a story that otherwise flowed along on the merits of Bishop’s lyrical writing and the tense atmosphere she created. What might have been cathartic felt too much like spectacle and deprived the reader of the emotion and suspense of the rest of the book.
That being said, “High Season” was a memorable read, reminiscent of “Dare Me” by Megan Abbott and Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects.”
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