The Au Pair

Seraphine Mayes, the protagonist of British author Rous’s atmospheric if muddled first novel, has so many questions, to which she despairs of getting answers, after her father’s recent death. Like why the 25-year-old barely looks like either of her brothers, or what drove her mother to kill herself at the family’s remote estate on the Norfolk coast the same day she and twin Danny arrived in July 1992. Then, while sorting through her father’s effects, she finds a snapshot, taken that fateful day, showing her proud parents and big brother, Edwin, with a single newborn—and resolves to track down the photographer, whom Edwin identifies as his au pair, Laura Silveira. Undeterred by pleas from her family to desist, as well as subsequent anonymous threats, Seraphine gradually teases open a dangerous Pandora’s box of secrets about her family and the au pair who became part of it. Rous ably interweaves accounts from dual narrators Seraphine and Laura to fan the suspense, but her plot-driven page-turner eventually founders after a few too many fantastic turns. Agent: Rebecca Ritchie, A.M. Heath (U.K). (Jan.)