“Fourfriends…four secrets” the cover declares and for some reason that - and thefact Kirsten Tranter’s new novel A CommonLoss (HarperCollins, $39.99) is set in Las Vegas - was enough to make methink I’d stumbled on a cross between TheHangover movies and Donna Tartt’s ASecret History. As it turns out I wasn’t far wrong although in my opinionthis novel isn’t as good as either of them.Tranteris an Australian novelist who is making her name writing literary psychologicalthrillers. Her first one, The Legacy,was published to great acclaim a couple of years ago and this is the follow up.
It’sthe story of a bunch of former college students who meet annually for a boy’strip to Vegas. Charismatic Dylan has been the leader of the group, the fixer ofproblems and the glue that held them together. Now he is gone, killed in a roadaccident, and the four remaining friends – Tallis, Brian, Cameron and Elliot -are taking their first trip without him.
Elliotour narrator is beginning to question his friendship with the group, wonderingif he even likes them. He’s about to learn he doesn’t know any of them verywell – most especially the late Dylan – for no one is quite what they seem.
Whilein Las Vegas each man receives a mysterious envelope containing informationabout a long-buried secret with the potential to destroy their careers,relationships or families. The sender is found to be Dylan’s secret halfbrother, Colin, who has stumbled on the careful records the dead man kept overthe course of his life. Dylan was party to all his friends’ most shamefulsecrets and he kept the evidence. Now Colin dreams of a bigger, better lifethan working in a casino and has decided blackmail is the way to get it.
Understress, Elliot is forced to look back and reassess everything about hisfriendships. “I realised with a nauseating lurch that this was only thebeginning, this new reckoning of the past, and it would be Dylan’s role, hiswords and gestures and expressions, that I would be forced to re-evaluate themost seriously,” he tells us.
Asthe scales are falling from his eyes, Elliot is also busy enjoying the sightsand nightlife of Vegas with Brian’s alluring new girlfriend Cynthia – a threadof the story that never seems to go anywhere. And that’s one of the problems withhis novel – the premise is good but the suspense just isn’t there. There’s toomuch fluff about the Bellagio Fountains and bits of the Berlin Wall, too muchtime spent drinking in bars, and rather too much of Elliot’s over-thinking, forthe pace to really crack along.
Alsonone of the characters truly engaged me and I couldn’t decide if that wasbecause Tranter hasn’t entirely pulled off writing from a male perspective orwhether the shallowness of Las Vegas sort of leached into everything else.
A Common Loss is a divertingenough thriller and as a treatise on male friendship it has plenty to say. It’swell written and smart. Yet from startto finish I as if it ought to have been a whole lot better than it actuallywas…perhaps even as good at The Hangovercrossed with A Secret History.
Nicky Pellegrino, (right NZH photo), a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 12 February, 2012
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