The Blame Game
By Sandie Jones
Minotaur Books
ISBN 978-1-250-83690-8
256pp.

Stephen King once wrote that writing controlled fiction is called plotting. “Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however… that is called ‘storytelling’. Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.”

If I had to describe this book, I would call it a literary version of laboured breathing. The plot here is wheezing, gasping for air under the weight of flimsy narrative choices. This flawed work of fiction from British author Sandie Jones is a lesson in how not to write a psychological thriller.

The genre of psychological thrillers reached its peak when Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl came out. This was followed by a flurry of similar books featuring an unreliable female protagonist like the ones in Girl on the Train and Before I Go to Sleep. Pretty soon, genre fatigue set in and most of the books being published within this genre became formulaic and run of the mill.

The Blame Game is yet another example in how lately this genre has been churning out mostly misses rather than hits, apart from books by reliable thriller writers like Clare Mackintosh and Liane Moriarty.

A quick-read of a ‘psychological thriller’ novel is weighed down by unfathomable characterisation and poor narrative choices

This book was an exasperating experience for me, both as a psychologist and a literary critic. Depiction of psychologists in thrillers is not a recent phenomenon. Books like Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient and In a Country of Mothers by A.M. Homes depict psychologists in significant roles embroiled in a twisted thriller. The delicate and complex nature of a psychologist’s job lends itself nimbly to psychological thrillers.

This book, however, makes a mockery of the professional relationship between a therapist and their patient for the sake of cheap thrills. Boundaries within the therapeutic relationship is the cornerstone for it to be beneficial to the client.

Boundary violations in therapy can lead to serious repercussions for the therapist.

This book however seems to justify the unethical actions of the therapist in the garb of going above and beyond in the name of service. This negates the entire practice of conducting therapy within predefined parameters and encourages dangerous stereotypes about the profession.

As a critic, if I try to justify the narrative arc by granting the writer dramatic licence, even then the narrative choices seem questionable. The climax of the book rides on the mystery of the identity of a person with sinister motives, who is out to get the protagonist Naomi. For this to be effective, readers need to root for the protagonist and have empathy towards her character.

However, the irrational decisions that she makes to dig herself deeper into a hole makes this a difficult task. Besides, there are significant narrative plot holes that prevent the reader from becoming invested in the storyline.

Our protagonist in this book is psychologist Naomi Chandler who specialises in cases of domestic abuse. When the book begins, she has knowingly violated professional ethics by inviting a patient, Jacob, to stay in an apartment she owns, so that he can escape his abusive wife. Naomi takes this decision without taking her husband into confidence, since her over-involvement with patients in the past had been a bone of contention between the couple, ever since her life was jeopardised once due to this.

Thus begins the litany of bad decisions taken by Naomi, that drives the flimsy plot of this book forward. Why she continues to make bad decisions against her better judgement escapes logic. At one point she says that “every part of my training told me to keep a distance from my clients, both literally and metaphorically, but it goes against human nature to see someone this distressed and not reach out a hand to comfort them.”

This reflects poorly on the author, since she has not done proper homework in crafting the role of a psychologist. In another instance, Naomi remarks that “I’m a happily married woman, with a professional reputation I guard fiercely. Yes, I may overstep the line sometimes, but not in this way.” There is a clear discrepancy between the character’s intentions and her actions.

She also gets embroiled in the domestic drama of another one of her clients who needs refuge from her abusive partner. What makes this book so aggravating is its naive and foolish protagonist, who keeps making one bad decision followed by another, while her lies continue to snowball.

An imperative part of structuring the storyline is to give motives to each character for their actions. I found motives for her actions unfathomable and the fact that no discernible justifications are provided for those actions extremely frustrating as a reader.

Naomi’s character comes across as a shoddy therapist who earns no sympathies from readers because of her refusal to come clean over minor matters, showing no respect for her job or marriage.

As the plot progresses, Naomi involves herself even more deeply in her client’s life, by agreeing to meet a drunken Jacob in a hotel bar. Soon afterward, Jacob disappears, and Naomi is the last person to have seen him. When the police begin to suspect Naomi, she becomes trapped in a cat-and-mouse game with a cunning manipulator, who may have emerged from her murky past or may be Jacob himself.

The saving grace of this novel is that it is a quick read. The winding plot offers plenty of surprises, but readers may lose patience with the main character, who persists in making the worst possible choice in every dangerous situation, such as confronting the killer on her own, instead of summoning the police present nearby. Jones is unlikely to win new fans with this one.

The reviewer is a clinical associate psychologist and freelance journalist.
She can be reached at rabeea.

saleem21@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 22nd, 2023