BOOK REVIEW: ‘What Happened to the Bennetts’

OPINION:

Lisa Scottoline is a bestselling and award-winning author of 34 legal thrillers and historical novels. She also writes a weekly humor column with her daughter Francesca Serritella for the Philadelphia Inquirer called “Chick Wit,” a witty take on life from a woman’s perspective.

Ms. Scottoline’s latest novel is “What Happened to the Bennetts.”

I reached out to her to ask about the novel and discovered that we are originally from the same Italian American neighborhood in South Philadelphia, and we lived around the corner from each other when we were young.     

I asked her how she would describe her current novel.

“I would describe it as a family story and a crime story rolled into one,” Ms. Scottoline replied. “It’s about a family that is driving home from a kid’s hockey game one night, and they are carjacked, and it goes terribly wrong. They later find themselves in witness protection. Violence can happen in a minute, and you can’t pretend that it doesn’t.”

I asked her why she chose the husband and father as the narrator of the novel and if it was difficult to write in the first person as a man. (I write short stories and I would never be so bold as to write in the first person of a woman.)

“I started writing about women as I wanted to see women in the lead, but I said to myself, you have to give it a try. You can’t write the same book over and over. I thought about the role of fathers. I’ve written a lot about mothers, being a mother myself, but this time I wanted to put the spotlight on a father. I was very close with my dad. This book is a lot like my dad.”

“In our culture we are very interested in heroes. There is a reason that Spider-Man movies make $500 million. I’m not putting them down. But you’re trying to look at a larger scene when you’re writing a book. So, the question in ‘What Happens to the Bennetts’ is what is a hero?”

I noted that I liked that the father was not a former special forces guy or a tough cop. He’s an ordinary family man.

“Exactly. He’s just a guy who really loves his family and will stop at nothing to protect them. That is the essence of being a good father.”

You cover a lot of ground in the novel. What kind of research did you do?

“I’ve been a lawyer and there is real law, there is real crime, and there is real police procedure. I asked the FBI where they would send someone temporarily before entering the Witness Protection Program and they said Delaware. I went down to Delaware, as I wanted it to be the setting. The main character is a farm boy from Hershey, PA, so I figured it would increase his sense of disorientation and dislocation. I wanted him to feel uncomfortable. Witness protection is a successful program to keep mobsters under lock and key and safe, but I wanted to explore what happens to a normal, law-abiding family in that situation,” Ms. Scottoline explained. “But you have to play by the rules. I’m big on that. The law is real. The procedures and how they do things are real. My name is on the novel. I vouch for it.”

There are many more women readers of crime fiction these days and many more women writers of crime fiction. Why do you think women are drawn to reading and writing crime fiction?

“I think that crime fiction is always about justice. Murder really matters. We have a lot of crime in our society and a lot of violence, and that’s why I’ve never written crime fiction where 20 people get killed. I think that murder itself is such a heinous, violent, and awful thing. When you examine it and wonder why someone commits it and see what the aftereffects are on a family and on a community, there is a lot there that people can think about and feel emotionally about. I think that’s what draws women, and men, to it.” 

I would add that crime fiction offers interesting characters, especially the bad guys. From Batman to James Bond, the villains are always more interesting.

“Yes, think about Lucifer in the Bible. Horrifying. You are looking at the good fight between good and evil.” 

Ms. Scottoline said she is now working on “Sacred,” which is about the rise of the Mafia in Sicily.

“What Happened to the Bennetts” is a well-written and fast-paced crime thriller, with lots of clever twists. Crime aficionados will enjoy this novel.

• Paul Davis’ ‘On Crime’ column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.

• • •

What Happened to the Bennetts
400 pages
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
March 29, 2022
$28.00