Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Love at first sight, a whirlwind Vegas wedding, a fairy-tale romance. For seventy-nine days, Tavish Advani has been the happiest man in the world—until his new life turns to ash, his wealthy in-laws’ house going up in a fiery explosion. His badly injured wife lies in a coma, her family all but annihilated.
Desperately trying to clear his name as the authorities zero in, he begins his own investigation into the fire—and learns that his wife’s picture-perfect family may have been nothing but a meticulously constructed mirage. The truth is much darker than anything Tavish could’ve imagined ...
Tavish thought he left the sins of his Los Angeles life behind, but it’s not so easy to leave behind an investigation into the deaths of several high-profile women—all of whom he professed to love. Tragedy and death follow him no matter where he goes . . . but this time, he knows he’s innocent.
Driving back to the Prasad family home overlooking Lake Tarawera on New Zealand’s spectacular volcanic plateau, with wedding cake samples on the passenger seat, financial whiz Tavish Advani is feeling hopeful. He sees a bright future ahead with his beloved, Diya, and he’s hoping those pesky LAPD questions about dead past lovers are fading in the rearview. But when he arrives at his fiancée’s family home, he finds smoke, fire, chaos. Later, Diya lies in a coma in the local hospital’s ICU. There are charred bodies in the Rotorua morgue. Who could have done this?
Why was Diya mumbling ‘Ani’ as she lay bleeding out from stab wounds in Tavish’s arms?
Auckland storyteller Nalini Singh is renowned as a global Queen of Paranormal Romance, with a long string of New York Times bestsellers packed with archangels, changelings, and psychics. But in recent years she’s also dived into the murky waters of human-focused mysteries and thrillers.
On that front, Such a Perfect Family may be her best yet, a twisting tale taking readers from Rotorua to the south Pacific islands of Fiji as Tavish tries to uncover anything about ‘Ani’, and more importantly to find some way to point to someone other than himself as the culprit, before the New Zealand Police and a story-chasing media lock in on his own chequered past. Meanwhile, in California, LAPD Detective Callum Baxter continues to investigate the deaths of Tavish’s past lovers.
Interspersing Tavish’s dubiously reliable narration with Baxter’s case notes – two determined, even obsessed, men at odds – Singh masterfully ratchets the tension, blending psychological thriller and murder mystery elements into a very good read likely to keep readers guessing right to its strong finish.
Further enhanced by insights into the pressures of immigrant life, along with Singh giving us taste of her own Fijian-Indian heritage, Such a Perfect Family offers something a little different in a growing ocean of domestic noir and psychological thrillers. A page-whirring read, well worth a look..
This review was first published in a February issue of the New Zealand Listener magazine
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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