Getting away with murder

Can a cover make a book?

Liverpudlian M. K. Oliver, a new writer who openly confesses that he was less-than-addicted to reading as a youngster, here tackles the daunting task of crafting a book that meets the fierce promise of its clarion, clever cover.

Now a career educator, Oliver has diligently availed himself of writers-to-be camps and courses and here trots out his first novel, A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage.

It is getting more than a little bit of attention. Oliver’s afterword verily preens about traipsing through Europe and its mountains, tirelessly fielding no fewer than 28 Zoom calls night and day as the film production courting intensified — even before the book launched. A Sociopath’s Guide will, undoubtedly, be a movie.

In any case, we have here Lalla Rook, a ridiculously privileged 30-something housewife, ensconced in a chic London home in Muswell Hill with her investment banker husband, Stephen, and their two young children, six-year-old Nelly and four-year-old Nathan. We will learn much later in the book that Lalla rather ruthlessly climbed her own brand of social ladder from some significantly lower heights, but this story starts with Lalla already perched near her beloved apex, Lalla angling to manoeuvre her brood even further to the tippity socio-economic top, Lalla orchestrating her elder child’s admission into an exclusive private school, Lalla masterminding full partnership for lackadaisical Stephen, and Lalla ensuring her family’s movement towards a fabulously elite residence in Hampstead.

It is thus a book almost entirely about its protagonist, this Lalla. She is beautiful, fit, smart, polished, thoughtful, committed. She is indefatigable. And, as we learn on the first page, she is amoral.

About to host a birthday party for little Nathan, Lalla decides the intruder lying freshly slain on the floor of one of the reception rooms (plural) in her home ought not to have intruded on her meticulous festive plans. So, as she will do several times in the book, Lalla hunkers down to cleaning up an irritant, fresh and mortal mess — she casually describes stabbing John-Doe-on-the-spot no fewer than seven times — and getting on with the more important bits of her busy day.

The 75-day story plays out in five prefixed parts: Relapse, Recalibrate, Reconnect, Revive and Renew. The chapters themselves are typical two- to four-page pulp fare, almost all concluding with another very predictable unpredictable. In short, A Sociopath’s Guide gallops exactly as many other such books do.

When obstacles intrude on her constructed Eden, Lalla acts (read: usually “kills” or, at the very least, “destroys”) mercilessly, swiftly and expertly. An obstacle might be a staunch private school headmistress, an unwise ex-girlfriend of Stephen, a troublesome ex-husband, a piggish investment banker, a near equally scheming mother-in-law or, perhaps, even an exorbitant gourmet birthday cake that simply needs buying.

Although the book is marketed as taking up the torch of British spy thriller Killing Eve, it does not: the cops are only peripherally involved, too thick to matter; there is no creepy, morbid romance lurking; Lalla, while skilled, is no professional assassin; she does not kill outside her own fabulously self-centred orbit; and Lalla only kills a precious few—she’s more choosy and less worldly than Killing Eve’s Villanelle.

Much of the mechanics of this story involve Lalla navigating her daunting way through a large and complex coterie of “friends,” each like-minded in their drive to unapologetic opulence, but none as clever nor as conniving as our Lalla. All but one are clueless about her extracurriculars, and each will, in their own way, feel the sting of Lalla’s devious machinations. This is not a genuine girlfriend group: this is a social circle Lalla happens to attend in these terminal days before her inevitable launch to her cherished economic stratosphere.

Is Lalla’s a successful marriage? Hardly. Does Lalla treasure, nonetheless, her children? Most assuredly. No one would describe her maternal behaviours as admirable, but there is earnest doting here as well as a relentless impulse to foster Nelly and Nathan’s own flourishing. Do not get in the way of Lalla’s carefully choreographed plans for herself and her progeny.

For readers prepared to suspend not just disbelief but gut literary judgment, this book will amuse and entertain. Lalla is certainly captivating. Again and again she encumbers herself with new wrinkles, even as she dutifully irons out yesterday’s nasty batch. The end of the story, which beckons quite fetchingly, could have legitimately and believably gone either way. Forget the cinematic destiny of A Sociopath’s Guide and the ride will suitably, genuinely divert.

While A Sociopath’s Guide was perhaps doomed to fall well short of its quippy title and booming cover, it is, for the most part, what it announces itself brazenly to be. Any clichés are charmingly self-aware, and Lalla is a dynamite hostess. The investment of reading time will pay off in a quick, if not lingering, manner.

Laurence Broadhurst teaches English and religion at St. Paul’s High School in Winnipeg.