As the bus disappears in a trail of black exhaust, Jenna notices a woman across the street who seems to be staring at her. She’s not one of the usual bus-stop parents. She has a pretty heart-shaped face, high cheekbones. Someone new in the neighborhood maybe. Too young to be a mom. An au pair? Jenna raises her hand to wave, but the woman turns away. Not even fellow outcasts want to be friends. Jenna watches a long moment as the woman crosses the street to avoid the other parents chatting on the sidewalk.
No matter how bad the person, we all cling to the days of innocence we remember from our youth.
Of course, not everyone was innocent. Savior House was less of a group home and more a ring of hell for Jenna, Donnie, and Nico. When they were teens, their female peers were disappearing at an alarming rate. This on top of unhealthy quantities of brutality to endure or evade, not to mention a strange rich person who stopped by occasionally with mysterious purpose. Twenty-five years ago, the three, together with two other friends, committed a homicide. (It’s in the prologue) Today, one of their group is already dead, and the rest are in mortal peril. Can any of them be saved? What goes around…
Alex Finlay – image from AnthonyFranzenBooks.com
We follow the three as they try to survive. The action is mostly contemporary, with looks back at their teen experience, which was not pretty, and the events that led up to that fateful day. They did not escape Savior House unscathed.
I love exploring how people deal with, and overcome, trauma. I’d read somewhere about how many people with childhood trauma somehow later channel that into highly successful careers. That was the spark for the idea of a group of teenagers in an abusive foster home growing up and having accomplished lives, but also a secret that will come back to haunt them 25 years later. – from 2023 The Big Thrill interview
Jenna is a DC-suburb stay-at-home stepmom, with a particularly dark past, which she believed she had left behind. Donnie was in a popular band twenty years ago, and is now playing the oldies circuit, currently working a cruise ship. He has issues with substances. Nico is an executive producer for a successful reality TV show, set in a mine. He has issues with gambling. Maybe their troubles are a form of penance. Attempts are made on all their lives.
Asked in the above interview how he came up with the unusual characters in this book, Finlay said,
For Donnie, I’ve long wanted to create an aging rocker as a character. In fact, seven years ago I interviewed the members of a popular 80s band knowing that someday I’d use it for a character. That day came when I wrote my first Donnie chapter for WHAT HAVE WE DONE.
For Nico, I have a friend who’s an executive producer of hit reality TV shows, so I had access to someone with a unique job. And the great fictional characters of others—Jason Bourne, Nikita, and Orphan X to name a few—inspired Jenna.
The book is divided into three parts. In The Targets, we meet and spend some time with each of the three, get to know them, their situations in life, their strengths and their issues. The Reunion brings at least some of the group back together, and The Truth is self-explanatory.
It is a wild ride, as Finlay keeps the action moving, and the pages flipping, as the three do their best to remain alive in a hostile world. There are plenty of white-knuckle passages, and chapter-ending questions left to be answered. Finlay knows how to end his chapters with a hook, to keep you from switching off that bedside lamp (or e-reader). He keeps you wondering who can be trusted.
The chapters are short, averaging a little over four pages per, and many, eighty-six, so you can pop into the book for a few minutes at a time, and still scarf down a chapter or five.
Some moral questions are raised. You will pick up some unexpected bits of intel. A killer uses an unusual weapon for their dark purpose. And there is some useful info on mining safety. You are hardly likely to fall in love with any of the characters, particularly any with a psycho-killer persuasion, but you will like them enough, particularly Jenna, (who, BTW, gets 36 of the 86 total chapters; Donnie and Nico get 22 and 16 respectively) to care about how things go for them, to hope that they can find some redemption, in addition to surviving. But this is pretty much a pure entertainment. Don’t worry about underlying content, themes, or larger issues. Just see what happens next, and then, and then, and then. It is a wonderful beach read. You won’t wonder what you have done once you finish reading. You’ll know. You will have had a good time.
he’s startled by a memory: the four of them at the bank of the river, on their knees, the gun barrel put to the back of Donnie’s head.
Ben’s voice echoes in his head. You don’t have to be scared anymore, Donnie.
A tear rolls down Donnie’s cheek.
I’m not so sure about that, Benny. I’m not so sure.
Review posted – 5/5/23
Publication date – 3/7/23
I received AREs of What Have We Done from Minotaur Books in return for a fair review. Now, would you please tell that person who keeps following me to go away. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.
This review has been cross-posted on GoodReads
=======================================EXTRA STUFF
Links to Finlay’s personal,
FB, and Instagram, and pages
Profile – From the author’s real-name website
Anthony Franze is a critically acclaimed novelist with St. Martin’s Press, and a lawyer in the Appellate & Supreme Court practice of a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm.
For more than a decade, Anthony was an adjunct professor of law teaching courses in Federal Courts, Legal Rhetoric, and Appellate Practice, and he currently participates in a European faculty exchange program where he teaches at law schools abroad.
He writes legal thrillers under his own name, including THE LAST JUSTICE (2012), THE ADVOCATE’S DAUGHTER (2016), and THE OUTSIDER (2017He writes commercial fiction under a pen name, [Alex Haley] and his 2021 novel was an Indie Next pick, a LibraryReads selection, an Amazon Editor’s Best Thriller, as well as a CNN, Newsweek, E!, BuzzFeed, Business Week, Goodreads, Parade, PopSugar, and Reader’s Digest best or most anticipated thriller of the year. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and optioned for television and film.
Interviews
—–The Big Thrill – Up Close: Alex Finlay – A CHILDHOOD DEED TO DIE FOR by K.L. Romo
—–The Big Thrill – 2022 – The Ties That Bind by Dawn Ius
—– Annie’s Book Stop of Worcester – Alex Finlay Interview – on The Night Shift
Item of Interest from the author
—–Criminal element – Excerpt – Chapter 2
Coot's Reviews 