Alison Gaylin on Pearl Maze and Amy Nathanson aka Aimee En

Thank you very much to Ayo for hosting today’s stop on my blog tour with If I Die Tonight, I am really pleased to be here. If I Die Tonight is a story told through four separate points of view in a small town called Havenkill.  I’d like to tell you a bit about two characters: Pearl Maze, a local cop and Aimee En, a former 80s popstar, who are both wrapped up in the sinister goings on in Havenkill:

Amy Nathanson aka Aimee En

“There’s been an accident.” Those are the first words we hear from rain-drenched, rainbow-haired, hysterical Amy, as she pounds on the door of the Havenkill police station in the wee hours of the morning in the midst of a raging storm. Later, we find out the details: Amy claims she was carjacked by a teenage boy in a hoodie. And, when another teenage boy rushed to her rescue, the mysterious carjacker ran him down. In peaceful Havenkill, the story seems implausible, to say the least. Is Amy telling the truth, or did she commit the hit-and-run herself?

While it seems hard at first to believe that Amy would concoct such an elaborate lie, she is, as it turns out, a rather elaborate person who lies frequently, to others and to herself. A minor pop music goddess back in the 80s, Amy has been living a quiet life in Woodstock with Vic Iota, her long-time romantic partner and former manager who is now suffering from dementia. But as devoted as she has been to Vic and his care, Amy also craves the fame she once had. It’s that craving that brings her to Havenkill that fateful night – a chance to play a gig at a Hudson dive bar, step one in her plan to resuscitate her faded career. When it doesn’t turn out the way she’d planned, her thirst for fame brings her into an even more unsavoury situation which leads, however indirectly, to the hit-and-run.

Pearl Maze

“I’m a uniformed cop from Havenkill,” Pearl says at one point. “I get cats out of trees”

That may be the way Pearl sees herself – or, more likely, the way she thinks others see her – but there is a lot more to this tough young police officer than meets the eye. Inquisitive and highly perceptive on the job, she tends to overindulge off duty, whether it’s in whisky or in anonymous sex with guys she meets on hook-up apps. Though she is compatible with her fellow officers on the small Havenkill police force, she has no genuinely close friendships, and shuts herself off from others. Even the apartment she’s chosen to live in, in a building that largely populated by seniors, precludes her from making close connections with people her own age.

Why does Pearl isolate herself? We discover early on that she has a dark secret that has haunted her for most of her life – one that makes her feel as though she can’t get close to anyone for fear they might see her for what she believes she is: a murderer.  While we know within the first few chapters that Pearl feels responsible for her mother’s death, the details aren’t fully revealed until later, and for the young officer they are inescapable, a source of constant turmoil. She must confront her past head-on after receiving a phone call from her long-estranged brother, revealing that her father, whom she hasn’t seen since she was a young child, is deathly ill and wants to speak to her. As she becomes further involved in the details of the Liam Miller hit-and-run, the intrusion of her past makes her identify with the suspect in ways she never expected, while an unexpectedly tender relationship with one of her hook-ups threatens to break down emotional walls she’s worked hard to build.

I absolutely loved writing these characters – I hope you enjoy reading them.

If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin (Century)

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There was a time when Jackie Reed knew her sons better than anyone. She used to be able to tell what they were thinking, feeling, if they were lying... But it's as though every day, every minute even, she knows them a little less. Her boys aren't boys anymore, they're becoming men - men she's not sure she recognises, men she's not sure she can trust. So when one of her son's classmates is killed in suspicious circumstances, people start asking questions. Was it really a hit and run? A car-jacking gone wrong? Or something much more sinister? Now Jackie must separate the truth from the lies. How did that boy end up on the road? And where was her son that night? 

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