I think I have found what almost certainly will be my favorite book of 2016. If you have never heard of Gina Wohlsdorf, who labored over this brilliant genre-blurring and genre-smashing book, you might well be forgiven, seeing as how SECURITY is her first novel and her other writing has been confined to equally well-crafted short fiction in limited circulation periodicals compiled by sharp-eyed editors. But you will remember Wohlsdorf for a long time after reading this one.

SECURITY is touching, violent, suspenseful, humorous and literary. I was reminded by turns of Arthur Hailey, Stephen King, Lawrence Durrell, Charles Dickens, Lawrence Block and Robert Bloch. Wohlsdorf combines a keen eye for emotion with a cinematic narrative, so much so that by page 20 I felt as if I had been watching a movie. If someone does indeed adapt this book for a film, they better be good --- and careful. This is a multifaceted gem that needs much more than superficial direction.

"I think I have found what almost certainly will be my favorite book of 2016.... Tough and tender in equal measure, SECURITY is one of those books that is longer than it seems (in all the right ways)."

The book takes place over the course of some very long, dusk-til-dawn hours inside the soon-to-open Manderley Resort, a beachfront luxury hotel in Santa Barbara. A number of people on staff are getting last-minute things together, all of it under the direction of Tessa, the hotel manager, who never takes a day off and has become an expert at massaging employee egos. Her world is quietly turned upside down when someone from her past abruptly shows up. What she doesn’t know is that a series of murders are beginning to take place within the claustrophobic confines of the Manderley, even as she begins renewing a very old and important acquaintance.

All that occurs here is relayed through the first person present voice of a narrator who is seemingly omnipresent and whose identity --- and role in the events that are unraveling --- is slowly revealed over the course of the book. Meanwhile, some of the staff members are systematically being horrifically murdered as others remain blissfully unaware of what is happening. And a star-crossed love affair is kindled for the first time.

Tough and tender in equal measure, SECURITY is one of those books that is longer than it seems (in all the right ways). It is full of graphic sex and violence (with neither being gratuitous) and folks with the right and wrong stuff. The novel’s strongest aspect, though, is its literary stylings. Even as she tinkers with the classic novel form (and for good and compelling reason), Wohlsdorf never forgets that she is a writer and gives her reader the best with every single syllable from first word to last sentence. I cannot wait to see what is next, especially since she leaves an unanswered, and only briefly stated, question (or two) hanging at the end. Do. Not. Miss. This. One.