Opening the Cat-Box of 1999 in END OF STORY (2024)

Originally posted May 20, 2024.

“Ye olde ghosts-of-long-ago. An instance in the present echoes an instance in the past. You certainly can’t write a traditional mystery without it. But, my dear child, […] you’re not in a traditional mystery. You’re in a psychological thriller.”

Horror critics frequently discuss the idea that the scares in horror media reflect current cultural anxieties. What does our society find frightening? I think you could argue something similar for mysteries and thrillers: at the most basic level, they rely on cultural ideas of what is a crime. More broadly, you have the question of what is a secret. How many turn-of-the-century stories involve the scandal of an unmarried young woman having children, or a previous relationship? Finally there is the question of what is a plot twist: if I revealed the bloodthirsty serial killer was a woman, or a grade-schooler—Gasp! Shock! Less so if I revealed that the serial killer was (dun dun dun) an adult man all along! (Well, I can think of one example, but it’s a comedy series—link is a spoiler).

What I’m saying is, plot twists can only function if the twist is something that the reader would not assume to be the case (or assume not to be the case) unless it was specified. Which brings me to GAD-themed psychological thriller End of Story by A.J. Finn.

Reclusive mystery novelist Sebastian Trapp is dying, so he invites his fan and pen-pal Nicky Hunter, a crime critic and essayist, to transcribe his memoirs. There’s one story on everyone’s mind, and up until this point Sebastian has remained silent on it: the double disappearance of his wife Hope and son Cole from separate locations on New Year’s Eve, 1999. So Nicky travels to the Trapp family home in San Francisco to stay with Sebastian, his second wife Diana, and adult daughter Madeleine, despite the worries of everyone in her social circle that she’s staying with a murderer who’s gotten away with the perfect crime. The reader may worry, too: End of Story‘s prologue opens with an unspecified dead woman in a pond. We may wonder if the victim is sweet-tempered Nicky or her eventual co-narrator Madeleine, the daughter left behind. (Unless you read the dust jacket, which makes clear that it’s neither of them.)

Nicky is overwhelmed at meeting her hero, and she and Sebastian get along like a house on fire (to Madeleine’s frustration), trading Holmes dialogue and Christie quotes. But we soon learn that she has an ulterior motive: Nicky knows more about Cole than she’s letting on, and she’s here to gently, gently prod the hornet’s nest of what happened 20 years ago. Over the course of her interviews, we learn more about the family’s history, about Sebastian’s wife, and particularly about his son. Cole was an odd, fey little boy, abused in the manner of so many odd fey little boys by both his peers and his father. “There is something about me that other people don not like,” he muses in his diary. He was dyslexic, loved origami, butterflies, and puzzles, disliked sports.

Hey, side note: what is it about the name “Cole” that lends itself so easily to so many fictional ghostly youths? I know that Dragon Age‘s waifish, autistic forgotten boy is named after the haunted young outcast of The Sixth Sense—maybe End of Story had the same idea, as one of its Cole-candidates (more on this in a second) indirectly quotes the film.

Nicky was chosen as biographer for her particular empathy, and through her perspective, we also come to feel a lot of sympathy for not only misfit Cole but eccentric Sebastian, “ferocious” Hope, misanthropic Madeleine, grieving Diana. We start to hope that nothing untoward happened at all.

But then: strange messages, mysterious butterflies, a masquerade party, and halfway through the book, the promised corpse. The characters begin to believe that Cole might still be alive, that “he could be anyone.” Is British exchange student Jonathan Grant faking his accent? Could adopted homicide detective Timbo Martinez have originally been a Trapp? Or perhaps foolish cousin Freddy, Cole’s old confidant, is impersonating the dead boy’s ghost? As Nicky thinks, “Someone could be a killer without being Cole, after all.”

I really must talk about What Happened To Cole, because as I said in the introduction, there are certain assumptions at play, and if you do not share them, you can solve End of Story‘s central mystery as early as page 42.

ROT13 for spoilers:

Gur Cebgbglcvpny Ernqre sbe Raq bs Fgbel frrzf gb or n juvgr, pvftraqre, urgrebfrkhny jbzna orgjrra gur ntrf bs 25 naq 40, jub unf n abezny yvsr naq ernqf n ybg bs pevzr abiryf. Avpxl vf na nivq zlfgrel ernqre, na nccneragyl abezny bhgfvqre jub yvxrf ure yvsr. Gur ubcr, gura, vf gung ernqref jvyy qb jung gurl hfhnyyl qb jvgu nhqvrapr vafregf, naq svyy va nal tncf va Avpxl’f punenpgrevmngvba be onpxfgbel jvgu qrgnvyf sebz gurve bja yvsr, shapgvbanyyl zvfyrnqvat gurzfryirf.

V nz abg, V guvax, gur cebgbglcvpny ernqre. V’z n abaovanel yrfovna, naq qhr gb zl vqragvgl, V bsgra svaq zlfrys fpnaavat jbexf sbe dhrre gurzrf ertneqyrff bs nhgube vagragvba. V yvxr gb oryvrir gung srznyr punenpgref ner vagrerfgrq va jbzra, hagvy cebira bgurejvfr; V ybbx sbe fvtaf gung punenpgref ner traqre-abapbasbezvat be genaftraqre.

Fb jura vg jnf zragvbarq gung Pbyr naq Znqryrvar avpxanzrq rnpu bgure Zntqnyn (nsgre gjb srznyr pbhfvaf va Crevy ng Raq Ubhfr), V vzzrqvngryl jbaqrerq vs Pbyr jnf npghnyyl n genaf tvey. Sebz gurer, V erzrzorerq gung bar bs gur Zntqnynf va gur ersreraprq abiry jrag ol “Avpx”, naq bs pbhefr (va nabgure erpheevat Puevfgvr gjvfg) “Avpxl” vf nyfb bsgra fubeg sbe “Avpbyr”. Abguvat va gur erfg bs gur obbx qvffhnqrq zr: gur cvax naq oyhr zbgvsf, gur ohggresyl vzntrel, “Purepurm yn srzzr,” gur fprar jurer Fronfgvna gnxrf Avpxl gb n zra’f pyho naq pbzzragf gung fur vf “qerffrq nf n jbzna,” rgp. rgp. rgp. Gurer ner npghnyyl n ybg bs pyhrf urer, vs lbh’er cnlvat nggragvba. (Nfvqr sebz gur irel erny zngrevny pyhr bs Avpxl’f unve pbybhe, juvpu nf sne nf V erzrzore jnf arire fcrpvsvrq. Naljnl.)

Ernyyl, zl bayl srne jnf gung vg jnf tbvat gb snyy vagb gur fnzr byq genafzvfbtlavfgvp pnaneq frra va zlfgrel fgbevrf sebz Qrgrpgvir Pbana gb Zvqfbzre Zheqref: gur senvy lbhat obl unf pbzr onpx nf n jbzna fcrpvsvpnyyl gb qrprvir naq zranpr bguref. Yhpxvyl vg qbrfa’g tb va gung qverpgvba; Avpxl vf rknpgyl jung fur frrzf (nyorvg NYFB n fbeg bs genafsrzvavar Pbhag bs Zbagr Puevfgb) naq trarenyyl n ybiryl crefba. Gur aneengvir gerngrq ure jvgu n ybg bs flzcngul (nygubhtu ure ovegu fheanzr vf ergebnpgviryl irel hasbeghangr), naq ubarfgyl, juvyr V qba’g unir zhpu pbasvqrapr va “ercerfragngvba”, V guvax vg jnf n pbzzraqnoyr pubvpr gb znxr gur ernqre-vafreg cebgntbavfg n genaf jbzna. V bayl jvfu Orggl unq orra gerngrq jvgu gur fnzr flzcngul. Fur’f abg gur jbefg rknzcyr bs gur “qent dhrra one zbgure” nepurglcr, ohg jura Avpxl cnffrf nf pvftraqre naq gur bayl bgure genaf punenpgre qbrf abg cnff, vg fbeg bs perngrf guvf hasbeghangr vzcyvpngvba gung genaf jbzra jvyy bayl or ernq nf jbzra vs gurl genafvgvbarq nf puvyqera (juvpu vf fvzcyl abg gehr). Naq ertneqyrff bs jurgure fbzrbar cnffrf, lbh pna fgvyy hfr xvaq qrfpevcgvir ynathntr. Gur fnzr vffhr pbzrf hc jvgu Znqryrvar, sbe rknzcyr, jub vf gnyy, nguyrgvp, naq sng, naq srryf onq nobhg jurgure fur ybbxf fhssvpvragyl srzvavar, naq Avpxl ersyrpgf gung abobql fubhyq or znqr gb srry onq nobhg gurve nccrnenapr.

End spoilers.

Anyway, yes, about 200 pages in, a body eventually shows up, and then not a whole lot else happens until the last ten chapters, where the plot twists fly thick and fast. I was considerably less happy with these revelations than the one above; they were a bit silly and could have benefited from more foreshadowing in the almost 400 previous pages. End of Story has quite a few meta jokes about whether the events unfolding obey the rules of a fair-play mystery or a psychological thriller. I don’t have an exact definition of the difference between the genres, but to me, it’s something like this: a mystery is a battle of wits with the reader. It would be nice if the reader was surprised, but what takes priority is that the mystery is fairly clued. A thriller, meanwhile, is bound to emotional goals: it wants to elicit a feeling of suspense followed by shock/surprise, and things like “clues” and “clear statements about what is going on” are less important.

By that metric, End of Story is definitely a psychological thriller. There were a couple of clues that I really felt were materially under-specified and actively withheld from the reader (even when I was on the lookout for them). In a mystery novel this would be pretty bad form. If Sherlock Holmes draws attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, there’s the risk that the reader will draw the correct inference and be able to solve the mystery. But if Sherlock Holmes doesn’t bring up the dog at all, then in his explanation mentions that, you know, when we first entered the building there was a bowl of water on the ground, remember, and that bowl was actually a dog bowl, because they have a dog, and so obviously we can deduce that the dog should have kicked up a fuss but didn’t because— Now, you risk the reader feeling cheated. That’s the situation you have here.

So I didn’t think the mystery was all that great, especially in comparison to some of the quoted classics. Under-clued, and the biggest plot twist relied on certain assumptions that I did not make. But I liked the characters, and it hit some emotional beats that resonated with me while avoiding the usual ways in which they are typically and perniciously employed in the genre, so on the whole I come down more on the side of liking the book than not. It was an enjoyable two-day read—end of story.