The Party by Elizabeth Day

Little, Brown, 304 pages, $26

What a complex and fascinating plot author Elizabeth Day has set down. No, not set down, this is a throw-down. What do you think is happening, the author seems to say. Aha! It’s not that. Now what do you think? Aha! It’s not that either.

Bare bones, the story is told in three alternating pieces. Martin “Little Shadow” Gilmour and his wife, Lucy, attend a party thrown by his best friend, Ben Fitzmaurice, and Ben's wife, Serena. Martin and Lucy are puttering along in life, Ben and Serena are fabulous. The current tale takes place in the Tipworth Police Station, while Martin is being interrogated. Something obviously happened at the party, but what is not immediately ascertainable. Then we see Martin’s story, going back to when he and Ben first met. Finally, Lucy’s story goes back a long way but primarily is centered on what happened after she met Martin.

Elizabeth Day deftly forms each character’s outstanding characteristics. Then she shakes up your preconceptions and dumps you in another version of the tale. You think you know, but you don’t. Actually, there are things you think you can discern from the story, and you will be mostly right, but what you don’t understand is what ties these disparate people together. That is Day’s conjuring trick, the story that ties them all together.

I found the odd but appropriate ending only vaguely satisfying. It smacked a little of the ending of Harry Potter, in which J. R. Rowling jumped ahead to show you how all the characters turned out. I liked that too, but found it vaguely jarring.