An Inconvenient Woman by Stéphanie Buelens

Scarlet, 312 pages, $25.95

“An Inconvenient Woman” is short enough to be gobbled up quickly, but the slow rolling out of secrets will make you linger a little while. Author Stéphanie Buelens is a winner with her debut novel.

Claire Fontaine is a private tutor of French in California. Buelens immediately makes you aware that Claire is a sad person whose daughter, Melody, has died. Then you meet Simon Miller, her ex-husband and stepfather of Melody. He is about to re-marry. His fiancée, too, has a daughter, and this is what sets Claire off.

Simon had Claire hospitalized for mental incapacitation once after Melody died. Claire blames Simon for her death. No, that’s not completely accurate; Claire mostly blames herself for Melody’s death, that she did not listen to what Melody tried to tell her about Simon.

What about Simon.

Simon has hired a sin-eater, Sloan Wilson. Sloan’s father was a cop, then Sloan was a cop. Now that she is no longer a cop — full story towards the end of the book — she hires herself out as a “fix-it” person. You have a problem? Sloan will remedy it. Simon’s problem is, of course, Claire. Claire’s interference is ratcheting up; she has taken to painting “child molester” on Simon’s car, writing him nasty letters, and threatening him.

When we hear Simon’s version of the story as told to Sloan, it creates a wedge of doubt about Claire’s insistence that Simon is an evil person. Sloan agrees to accept Simon as a client, and so she begins to insinuate herself in Claire’s life.

Sloan tails Claire to her French lessons. (There is an odd assortment of language clients, and I found their characterizations very interesting.) She gets to know the young woman Claire is mentoring: someone who was homeless and on the streets, but who managed to get off the streets and get a job. Using that woman, Destiny, Sloan determines to trap Claire when her threats escalate into action.

The narrative moves between Claire and Sloan in the first person. Buelens keeps their voices enough different, although they have many points of congruence. For instance, the underlying stories about their fathers are intense. Buelens builds tension with some of the French clients as well. The resolution of each problem gives us a better understanding of Claire and more of an ability to tell if she is a reliable narrator or is deceiving herself.

There are no car chases, no stupidly going down to the dark basement, no prolonged dredging through computer files. It is a psychological thriller and also a work of detection, as we follow Sloan through the process of digging out Claire’s, Destiny’s, and Simon’s stories.

“An Inconvenient Woman” displays the meaning of the title in many ways. It is a “light” read, with no disrespect intended to the author. Rather, Buelens makes her story float along without manicured scenery or pop-out-of-the-closet moments, but it is tied still to substance and feeling in a deep way.