Published originally in the UK, WHAT SHE LEFT has already received attention, reviews and sales. Happily, it deserves all three in equal measure.

The story opens on February 5, 2012, when the body of a young woman, soon to be identified as Alice Salmon, washes ashore on the riverbank near London. Her apparently accidental death becomes a media sensation and the obsession of a professor at her old college, Jeremy Cooke, known as Old Cookie. Cooke’s personal involvement with her and her mother makes him the obvious person to recreate her life and death in a book, but also marks him as a “person of interest” for the police and those who harbor suspicions about the circumstances of her death.

"The ultimate feat that this book accomplishes --- aside from that of keeping the reader on tenterhooks until close to the last page --- is to make the story feel like it’s unwinding in a linear fashion, despite the appearance of its being assembled as a scrapbook of Alice’s life and untimely death."

Cooke becomes the main narrator, even though others’ emails and blog posts are amply represented. This story --- the backbone of Cooke’s eventual book --- is, in fact, a compendium of snippets from emails, blog posts, voicemails, interviews, lists that Alice left behind and the occasional letter. In the process, the reader gets to know Alice’s circle of family, friends and potential enemies. Does that include her sometime lover, Ben; her spurned fiancé, Luke; her old flat mate, Gavin; and the mysterious “Lone Wolf,” or the strangers who didn’t like the articles she wrote in her job as a journalist? And where exactly does quirky Professor Cooke fit in?

Cooke’s life, loves and frequent lapses become a significant strand in the story, and the reader has to figure out if his version of events is factual or simply self-serving. Author T.R. Richmond also shows how ambivalent many of the characters, and the media, are about Cooke --- an ambivalence that the reader is bound to share. In some articles and posts, he comes across as a seedy pervert, and then, when his health issues come to the public’s attention, he emerges as a brilliant and benign character who has tried to imbue tragic Alice’s life with meaning. Of course, Richmond seems to be saying that the media has no qualms about changing its tune to suit what its readers will respond to at that moment. 

The ultimate feat that this book accomplishes --- aside from that of keeping the reader on tenterhooks until close to the last page --- is to make the story feel like it’s unwinding in a linear fashion, despite the appearance of its being assembled as a scrapbook of Alice’s life and untimely death. As with the podcast “Serial,” WHAT SHE LEFT evolves out of a collection of interviews and posts over a period of time (most of which are not chronological) to become a portrait of a community in crisis. Each member has his or her own motives and opportunity, and most have something to hide. Eventually, as the trail becomes clearer, the characters harden in their determination to either find the truth or finger someone else as a potential suspect.

As is the case with most mysteries, the denouement is a bit of a letdown. But as with most good mysteries, the trip there is really the payoff. Let’s hope that T.R. Richmond, a journalist with this one novel under his belt, will go on to take readers on many more trips.