Identity theft is the game of the name

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This article was published 24/10/2020 (2178 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NARRATOR Jessica Williams is a walking mess when she serendipitously meets Jessica Williams at the Newark airport.

Golly, what are the chances that they share not only a name but a date of birth too? Freaky, eh?

A few drinks, some conversation, a little bit too much personal information and careless use of a cellphone, and our narrator is suddenly penniless and bereft of her ID, and the second JW is nowhere to be found.

And then there’s another Jessica Williams who’s a librarian in upstate New York, and then another, this time an injured war vet in Philly, and they’ve both been ripped off by the dastardly JW after coming into money. But wait, there’s more: yet another Jessica Williams in Wyoming who looks ripe for the picking.

Meanwhile, the police show little interest in tracking down the evil Jessica Williams, who shows a nasty ability to wreak further havoc on anyone who tries to bring her to justice.

Montreal author Catherine McKenzie has given us quite the intriguing plot.

As those of us of an age know, starting in 1990 it seemed half the girl babies were Jessica, and apparently Williams is the third most popular surname in the U.S. When the two Jessicas meet, it may not have been an accident. Who could have guessed?

When she meets the evil JW, our first-person narrator is already in a heap of trouble. She’s closing in on 30 after being fired from her online media job for plagiarism. No defence, she did it, she got caught.

Narrator Jessica grew up in a cult, the Land of Todd, run by a charismatic nutbar who convinced her parents to give him all their worldly goods and join his barricaded retreat deep in the woods, where children were separated from their families and subjected to soul-destroying rules, to brutal uniformity, physical torment, and maybe, some of the girls, to rape by the patriarchal master.

Fortunately, an enigmatic private investigator named Liam rescued his cousin from the Land of Todd, and later over-the-walled our Jessica and several other children over a decade or so.

Liam and our Jessica have a weird relationship, that — OK, no spoilers here, but his skills do come in handy as various Jessicas go hunting for the evil JW.

It’s quite the fascinating hunt — not very successful initially and with, it goes without saying, unintended consequences, such as trying to explain to the cops why a group of women is travelling together, all with the same name and date of birth.

As they hunt, the narrator’s time in the cult becomes an ever-more-critical part of the tale, though where McKenzie is going isn’t clear. It is, after all, a mystery novel.

Is it also a murder mystery? Read on.

And as the tale nears a conclusion comes the problem of how to give readers a heads-up without spoiling the whole book.

Let’s say some authors play fair with readers, leaving a trail of clues that the reader can examine in retrospect and say, yeah, OK, if I’d spotted those hints, I could have guessed the murderer’s identity.

And then there may be an author who goes totally off the rails with gotcha moment after gotcha moment, for which no trail of clues has been laid. Kind of on a scale of “it was all a dream,” or introducing a murderer on page 350 who’s never been mentioned until that point.

Some readers may marvel at where McKenzie takes us and think “Gosh, that’s so clever,” or “My goodness, I never in my wildest dreams saw that coming.”

Or the reader may gasp and go, what? What? What?!?! Are you serious?

Really, Catherine? Like, really?

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin follows British TV journalist Nick Martin on Twitter, but isn’t offering up his banking passwords.