Die For You
By Lisa Unger
“The last time I saw my husband . . .” is how Lisa Unger begins her literary thriller, Die For You. The protagonist is Isabel Raine, a best-selling author with a loving husband of five years. Marcus kisses her goodbye and heads to his New York City office, while she begins her day as a writer. And that’s where normalcy ends. Marcus doesn’t come home. When Isabel goes to his office the next morning in search of him, she’s caught in the middle of a supposed FBI raid. She then learns that the real Marcus Raine disappeared years ago.
Isabel’s quest for answers takes her to Prague, the childhood home of her husband, after she discovers Kristof Ragan had wooed and married her because of her knowledge of his native city. She searches for him there, finds and then runs from him, and the showdown occurs in Prague.
Die For You kept me reading because I enjoyed the first-person sections with Isabel, and I wanted to learn how the story played out. What caused me to struggle were the murky pronouns and the constant moving from one viewpoint to another. Books where a first-person viewpoint alternates with a third-person viewpoint are easy enough to follow, but this one has three third-person viewpoint characters. It’s a wild ride not only for the protagonist but for the reader, who must constantly readjust and figure out which character’s viewpoint is current.
The constant switching of viewpoints and the overuse of pronouns made for choppy reading. Why couldn’t we know right away that “She never thought of that night anymore” referred to Isabel’s sister, Linda? Instead, we have to read seven lines before learning her identity. One chapter begins, “He felt an acute annoyance as she bled out, died slowly.” Then we move into a lengthy flashback as we have to decipher who “he” and “she” are. It’s even more confusing because the “he” of the unnamed viewpoint character gets mixed up with the “he” of one of his named victims.
The four viewpoint characters are Isabel, her husband, her sister, and one of the detectives. Even the real Marcus (the dead one) comes back to life in a flashback scene with “he” (Kristof, the fake Marcus). Isabel has a friend/lover/agent, Linda has a husband and a lover, Detective Crowe has an ex-wife with a lover, and his partner also has family issues. Then there’s the story of Isabel’s and Linda’s dead parents, scenes with Kristof’s three other lovers, and the story of his relationship with his brother. Most of these are told in flashbacks, another reason the book feels so choppy.
The author’s main focus seems to be on relationships, with the plot secondary. Unger says her novels contain “a thread of domestic danger,” and that everyone hides a facet of personality from loved ones. Therefore, the person one should most fear “is often the person sleeping beside you.” The subplot about Linda being stalked by her lover is added solely for this purpose; it does not further the main plot. Other subplots– the childhood of Kristof and his brother, the father’s suicide, Isabel and her agent–are mostly relationship threads and flashbacks
There was no real reason for Isabel to go chasing off to Prague in search of Kristof. She got along fine with the detectives and did not distrust or fear them. She even sent an email with her findings as she left the USA, and they became sort of research partners at that point. The scenes of violence felt contrived, with Isabel miraculously escaping serious injury until the climax.
Unger’s previous novels, Black Out, Sliver of Truth, and Beautiful Lies, have been published in 26 countries. Yet, this one strikes me as a first effort, rather than one written by an international bestselling author.