[5]Broken Boys: a Thriller by Jill Kelly
Book Review by Leona Grieve
While watching a parade with his wife, junior high school teacher, Gordon Morehouse, is momentarily distracted while ogling an attractive neighbor. Then in an instant, his wife is gone. As a witness had seen her shortly afterward with a strange man, the police believe Maggie has left on her own accord with a new lover, though one detective is not so sure.
But Maggie, bored with her intractable husband, is on an adventure with a man called Scully, a ruthless but enigmatic drifter she knows nothing about. Soon he has Maggie embroiled in what appear to be petty crimes, though his increasing infatuation with ‘the Game’ as he calls it, begins to alarm her. While her suspicions increase with each new city they pass through, and each ‘mark’ Scully scams, Maggie is sucked into his web of lies and vows of undying love. And unwittingly, her husband and son Ben fall victim to Maggie’s indiscretion.
As the story takes unexpected twists and turns, the tension mounts at an unrelenting pace. The question is not whether the Morehouse family can extricate themselves from Scully’s grip, but if they can survive it. Broken Boy is a suspenseful, cautionary tale that peers behind the curtains of, by all appearances, an ideal marriage, when in fact it is anything but. Kelly has an extraordinary ability to delve into her characters’ psyches and expose them as the damaged humans they are.
About the Reviewer: Leona Grieve is a writer and editor. Under the pen name Leigh Goodison she is the author of the medical thriller, The Jigsaw Man, the coming of age/YA novel, Wild Ones, about a foster child who is sent to live on a ranch in southeastern Oregon, The Horse Trailer Owner’s Manual (reference), and Goodies From the Great White North, a cooking memoir. Her latest thriller, Limboland, will be released in summer 2016.