By Flynn Berry; Viking, July 2018
The website for the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program of the FBI posted the following sobering statistics for their annual Crime in the United States report: “In 2015, more than 29 percent (29.2) of homicide victims were killed by someone they knew other than family members (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.), 12.8 percent were slain by family members, and 10.2 percent were killed by strangers. The relationship between murder victims and offenders was unknown in 47.8 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter incidents.” This means, in the United States alone, if you are a victim of homicide, there is at least a 42% chance that you will know the person who killed you. It is a staggering figure, and one that makes Flynn Berry’s novel, A Double Life, sadly apropos, even though it is set in the U.K.
The story is told from the viewpoint of Claire, a doctor in London trying to hide from a horrible past. Thirty years prior, Claire’s nanny was murdered and her mother brutally assaulted inside the house while she and her brother slept. The man accused of the crime? Her father, Lord Colin Spenser, a well-connected man with high-society friends that all proclaim his innocence…and help him evade arrest. When her father disappears, Claire’s family is left to change their names, move away, and try to pick up the pieces. Berry does an incredible job of showing the varied impacts domestic violent crime can have, both large and small, as well as the toxic influence of media sensationalism. The fact that the book is loosely based on a true story (the 1970s Lord Lucan case) makes it all the more real; things like this are happening every day, to everyday people.
What happens when Claire finally gets a solid lead on her father’s possible whereabouts also rings true, even while feeling slightly anti-climactic. Unfortunately, the realistic ends are often like that, and Berry’s tale doesn’t try to sensationalize. Instead, it proves a point about how much better care we should take of the victims in this ever-increasing demographic of people—and what can happen when we don’t.
