We Begin at the End Complex but Rewarding

 

 

We Begin at the End (2020)

By Chris Whitaker

Henry Holt and Company, 370 pages.

 

Did you ever have a childhood friend, lose touch, and meet again decades later? The first thing that runs through your mind is whether the kid you recall still resides within the adult standing before you. That's the dilemma facing Chief Walker – known to most simply as “Walk”– who now keeps the peace in a small California town near Anaheim. He has never believed that his best buddy, Vincent King, was guilty though he's been in prison since being adjudicated as an adult at age15 for the killing of seven–year–old Sissy Radley.

 

Thirty years later, Vincent is out of jail. Almost immediately, though, he is the prime suspect in the death of Star Radley. There's nothing neat in any part of Chris Whitaker's novel. Everybody either has something to hide or suffering from some deep-seated hurt. The Radley clan isn't exactly a collection of upright citizens. Star was a woman of loose virtue, a drunkard, a stripper, and the rough sex lover of club owner/his developer Dickie Darke, Walk’s chief suspect. Star has also left behind a daughter, Duchess, a foul-mouthed 13-year-old, who calls herself “Outlaw” and tries to act and think like one. 

 

Walk, though, has issues of his own: he's a widower, is emotionally shut down, has been unlucky in the dating scene, and is trying to hide the fact that he has Parkinson's disease. He feels protective of Duchess, in part because his father-in-law's deceased wife was Star’s sister. Outlaw, of course, thinks she needs no one and balks at Walk’s attempt to send her to live with her grandfather.

 

Walk isn’t getting anywhere with an investigation he’s not even supposed to undertake. All of the evidence points directly at Vincent, as State Police remind him. Walk refuses to accept that, but it is patently obvious he continues to see his friend through a 15-year-old’s eyes. Vincent is taciturn, doesn’t insist he’s innocent, won’t say much about his whereabouts when Star was killed, and doesn’t appear to care very much about his fate. Even Milton, the local butcher, testifies he overheard a heated argument between Star and Vincent. Also hanging over Vincent’s head is that he killed another inmate during a prison brawl. To top it off, he wants Martha May to defend him, and that’s pretty messy; she specializes in family law and is one of Walk’s former girlfriends. Even she is receptive to the idea that Vincent might be just what he seems: a cold-hearted murderer.

 

But Walk can't hear any of that. He immediately thinks Darke got to Milton, and begins to poke his nose into Darke’s finances, his real estate dealings, and an offer to buy Vincent’s land. Walk has so many irons in the fire he’d have to be the Hindu goddess Durga to hold them all. Add another arm when Milton’s bloated body is pulled from the water. Walk unearths some shocking secrets about Milton, but that doesn’t make him a perjurer. Nonetheless, Walk again casts his suspicions toward Darke.

 

Believe me when I say I've only uncoiled several of the loosely bound serpentine kinks in a novel that is equal parts a murder mystery, psychological investigation, and thriller.

Whitaker gets credit for understanding that criminal cases are seldom cut and dried. He also knows enough to steer clear of easy answers, black and white morality, and omniscient investigators. We come to imagine that Walk is really trying to recover his own 15-year-old self to deal with his discomfort with adult life, but is that so? I will say only that the book wends its way toward a towards a shocking and surprising ending that's not entirely of the happy-ever-after variety.

 

Complexity is the strength and perhaps a curse of We Begin at the End. There are many characters, motives, and personae to be juggled. In essence, Whitaker has constructed a thinking person’s puzzle that some readers may find akin to one of those 12,000-piece jigsaws that sits on library tables and takes a village to assemble. It’s not always a breezy read, but in my estimation, it’s worth plowing through. Whitaker is a very good writer who diverts our attention elsewhere when he tiptoes toward the melodramatic. He is also skillful enough that we often forget that the book’s structure is circular. He tricks us again with a title that can and should be taken several ways.

 

Many psychologists claim that our basic personalities are formed during childhood, though they generally fudge that assertion by noting that moral development comes a bit later. So, do we “know” a 45-year-old who was our best friend at 15? Don't be sure that you do. Don't be sure that you don't!

 

Rob Weir