I discovered "Sunburn" in one of those Kindle "Deals of the Day" emails and thought it was worth spending buck ninety-nine to try.
What a bargain.
This is a thriller of a novel, published in 2018, and written in noir style. As I read it, I was seeing this story as a black & white 1940's movie starring Barbara Stanwyck and John Garfield.
In the beginning of the book, we meet Polly, who has just ditched her husband and one year old daughter while on a vacation at the Delaware beaches. She settles in an out of the way motel in a small town off the beaten path between said beaches and Baltimore. We also meet Adam, who also finds himself at that same dump of a motel due to "car trouble". However, we soon learn that Adam has other purposes on his agenda. He has been hired to find and follow Polly, but who hired him, and exactly why is he following her and just what is it he supposed to find out about her?
Adam and Polly then take jobs at low rent diner/bar. She as waitress/barmaid, he as a short order cook, and lo and behold, they fall for each other. Both of them, though, have reservations about just who this person with whom they are falling in love (lust?) is. Can they trust this person? We also meet, among others through chapters with alternating points of view, a crooked cop, an unscrupulous insurance broker, the waitress that also works at the greasy spoon, and we learn about Polly's two marriages, two children, and her, shall we say, checkered past.
In her afterward to the novel, Lippman tells us that this story is in the style of hard-boiled, noir fiction writher James M. Cain, who authored such classics as "Double Indemnity","The Postman Always Rings twice", and "Mildred Pierce", and she nails this tribute perfectly. As you read it, you can almost visualize the dust motes swirling in the sunlight that comes through the torn window blinds of the cheap motel where Polly and Adam are shacked up.
I have to say that I loved this book, and I give it the full Four Grandstander Stars. If only Billy Wilder were still with us to make it into a movie.
(NOTE: Sharp eyed movie buffs will note that I mixed a metaphor in the body of this post. I suspect that my pal David Cicotello will be all over it.)
