We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker, takes place primarily in a Cape Haven, a small California town, and alternates between two protagonists, Duchess, a thirteen-year-old, (daughter of Star, an alcoholic and poverty-stricken single mom), and Owen, the kind, aging, lifelong Chief of Police who’s never investigated a felony or fired his gun. Rather that hint about the plot, I’ll tell you what makes this a compelling page-turner and what the downsides are.

Why is it a compelling page-turner? First, the characters. Some seem innocent, like Duchess’s little brother Robin, but most are openly shaped by intense pain and the opposites of hate and love, good and evil. The characters in this book felt like characters in a James Lee Burke book about Dave Robicheaux and his Quixotic sidekick, Clint. But where Burke usually has three or four such characters in a tale, this novel has six or seven. Second, there’s lots of interesting, fast-moving plot, some predictable, but most unpredictable, organized around figuring out who did what and why. Third, the story begins with tragedy and then, amazingly, heads ninety miles-an-hour into more tragedy and never lets up on the gas pedal. This story is romantic the way Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique or Hugo’s Les Miserable is romantic. It breaks your heart, does it again, and then winds up for another go. It’s poignancy on mushrooms with a sledgehammer.

The downsides are that the author sometimes takes poetic license to exaggerate or create features in characters that are not “realistic.” The New York Times trashed the novel because of this. IMHO, NYT, you missed the point. True, Duchess’s over-the-top hate stretches the bounds of believability, but it makes her love more powerful, and, emotionally, it’s not unrealistic. I really loved this novel. They don’t like it as much as me, but here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/chris-whitaker/we-begin-at-the-end/