Saltwater (releases March 2025)

By Katy Hays

Penguin Random House, 336 pages

★★★★

 

Booze, money, doppelgangers, paranoia, murder, and sun-blasted Capri… What else do you need? Saltwater, the new novel from Katy Hays (The Cloisters), will keep you off-guard. It contrasts old money with new, the latter of which scores low on the character and honesty scales.

 

The loaded Lingate family owes its wealth to a grandfather, an oil baron. As the old saying goes, you need money to make money. The parental generation swelled the coffers and sons Richard and Marcus have done well in Los Angeles, though Richard is mostly pomp and ego, and Marcus is all business.

 

Capri is where the Lingates summer. Those of us who’ve been there can attest it is stunningly beautiful, but also precarious. Unlike most islands in the Gulf of Naples it’s not volcanic, but its karstic landscape is filled with cliffs, caves, and rugged terrain. The Roman emperor Tiberius dispatched enemies by having them pushed into the sea from a high balcony of Villa Jovis. That method may have been the fate of Sarah Lingate, Richard’s wife, in 1992. Her body was identified after she “fell” from a cliffside wall in villa in which the family was staying. Local authorities suspected foul play, but evidence was scant and money buys attorneys and allies in high places.

 

Part I of Saltwater tells Sarah’s tale in her voice. She was a celebrated East Coast playwright before marrying Richard and moving to Los Angeles. After three years she is bored and angered by the controlling ways of the Lingates. They are reminiscent of movie mob families in their preoccupation with the “family,” which they interpret as a collective in which the will of individuals is secondary. That includes working wives, but Sarah is too intelligent, ambitious, and free-spirited. Not only does she want a divorce,  she has written an utterly brilliant play that could be seen as confessional. Bumbling Richard and forceful Marcus try to dissuade her from a reputation-damaging divorce, but she has a plan to  free herself–until she drowns after falling from a cliff. Hays tells her tale in the form of a sequential countdown of days and hours before she dies. Horrible accident or murder? A fancy necklace might hold the clue.

 

Part II jumps to 2022 and focuses on Helen, Sarah and Richard’s daughter who was three when her mother died. Capri is again the site of family drama and melodrama. This part of the novel involves a new investigation into Sarah’s death and throws the Lingates into a tizzy. Not only is family honor at stake, but it’s bad for pending business transactions. Marcus’ assistant Lorna Moreno plays a major role as well. The hours before her disappearance structures Part II.

 

Helen is pivotal, though as she’s the presumptive heir to the Lingate fortune. Marcus is married to Naomi, though they are childless. Naomi plays the part of an unreliable narrator, as we never know if she’s scheming, drunk, or too vacuous for anything except spending time and money in the boutiques along Capri’s Via Camerelle. Richard, Marcus, and Naomi all want to see Helen properly married, but she has her mother’s mind. She dallies with clueless Freddy but is also attracted to Ciro, whom she has known since both were children. The Lingates disapprove of Ciro, as he is the son of the villa’s caretaker Marina Piccola. (Marina has private thoughts on Sarah’s death.)

 

Lorna is an especially interesting character. It’s never entirely clear whose side she’s on, if any. She might be a con artist, Helen’s ally, or an innocent victim. All we know for sure is that millions of Euros change hands, but where they go  to is a mystery within the mystery. Will the Lingate castle crumble or will money prop up the foundations? You will not know until the end who is guilty of what. Hays intersperses newspaper clippings to build the drama.

 

Hays spins a riveting, page-turning yarn. One wonders, though, how readers will respond to the novel’s Deus ex machina resolutions. Some might find them very satisfying, others unconvincingly neat. I’m mostly in the second camp and was bothered by the contrivance of parallel plot lines. I had to remind myself that’s it fiction, not biography. It’s an exciting read no matter how you slice it–unless strict morality is your personal touchstone.

 

Rob Weir

https://off-centerviews.blogspot.com/