All is Not Forgotten

 

For my birthday back in July, a cousin signed me up to Teatime Bookshop, a book subscription service, delivering 2 crime novels per month to my door. The first of these was All is Not Forgotten, by Connecticut author Wendy Walker (who I might add now follows me on Instagram). 

I wouldn’t normally put a novel review up on Psychology Saturday, but there’s a connection. The book’s premise: in the small, sleepy town of Fairview CT, a brutal rape destroys the tranquillity. The perpetrator is at large, and suspected as a local. The victim, Jenny Kramer, is offered an experimental psychological treatment allowing her – in theory – to forget the incident, therefore eradicating her PTSD. The treatment, however, comes with its own side-effects, and her father is determined to uncover the perpetrator – even if Jenny isn’t. 

The treatment – ‘Benzatral’ – is skimmed over, as if the author hasn’t properly researched similar drugs available today, or at least wasn’t confident enough to expound the technical details in layman’s terms. You know me. Armchair psychologist. I love that kind of thing, so was disappointed it wasn’t made a more thorough strand of the novel. This shouldn’t have been that difficult, given the narrator is the town’s resident psychiatrist, who treats a number of the characters. 

Said psychiatrist (his name appears as both Alan and Allen) uncovers numerous dark secrets about them all, leading to a twist-filled story. It certainly holds the interest, although there is an air of traditionalism, a hint of slut-shaming (a character refers to ‘deviant sex acts’ without describing them. Are they consensual? Legal? Or not?) and perhaps over-sanitised dialogue. Characters occasionally describe things they hadn’t seen, and make a lot of naive assumptions about others. 

I dunno. An intriguing but flawed story.