Somebody I Used to Know by David Bell

Somebody I Used to Know.  David Bell. Penguin Group (USA). July 2015. 432 pp.  ISBN#: 9780451474209.

Nick Hansen has a satisfying job as a housing authority caseworker. He’s happiest when the system is just and angry when it fails.  Then one day when he’s in a supermarket to pick up some items for home cooking, he sees a young woman who looks just like his dead girlfriend, that is the one who died twenty years ago!  Stunned, he waits but then confronts the girl and asks her if she’s related to someone he knows.  She drops everything she was holding and runs away as fast as she can.  From that moment until the very last page the reader is gripped with a phenomenal story that slowly evolves with revelations coming from several women initially involved in the unbelievably complex story.

What would you do if your child committed a crime that would mean a future composed of a jail sentence and a reputable job that would never happen?  And what would you do if someone was responsible for the death of your child?  How long would your anger and desire for revenge continue?  Would you pass on that rage until your family had the same determination for vigilante justice?  These questions arise and force the reader to consider his or her own answers.  Yet the reality is so much worse than what one can imagine and what Nick has been thinking and feeling for years is so far from the truth that he will be increasingly blindsided with the truth!

Somebody I Used to Know is fine criminal fiction that is all too credible to any reader who watches or listens to the news on a daily basis.  It’s a novel about the terrible consequences made with quickly made choices and decisions that change the lives of those intimately involved but also those who knew snippets of each part of the story.  Wonderful novel, David Bell – stunning story that will keep reader’s up at night until the end of the story. Highly recommended!