Trust No One

Trust No One  by Paul Cleave   342 pages

From the start, we are following crime writer Jerry Grey’s fairly quick decent into Alzheimer’s.  Prior to this diagnosis, and parallel denial, Jerry wrote books about evil men committing brutal crimes against women. As his declining grasp on reality intensifies, he starts confessing to those crimes, claiming they are not fiction, but based on acts he committed. The chapters alternate between the past and the present, between the lucid and irrational states of mind, while Jerry struggles with trust – can he trust his memory? His family? His friends? His caregivers? The law? I was fascinated by the premise of a crime writer’s inability to differentiate between his own reality and the lives of his characters; ultimately, the weak conclusion compromised the concept and disappointed, not because I figured out who done it, but because my sense of justice wasn’t appeased.

Posted By:   Regina C.