In January 2002, 46-year-old fashion writer Crista Worthington was found stabbed to death on the floor of her cottage in Truro, Mass. Her curly-haired toddler, Ava, was nestled by her side. The murder traumatized Worthington's idyllic Cape Cod community and captured the attention of the national media. Here, Truro resident Flook (My Sister Life: The Story of My Sister's Disappearance) attempts to make literary sense of the tragic, downward spiral of Worthington. An attractive former Vassar girl and scion of a prominent local family, she left a glamorous career in New York (she also worked for WWD
in Paris) to have an affair with a ruggedly handsome but very married fisherman and have his child. Flook, despite her lively writing, cannot solve the crime. "No one can understand the arc of the victim's life until her killer is ID'ed," writes Flook herself. Flook turns to terse Michael O'Keefe, the assistant district attorney responsible for the Worthington case, for insight and what can only be called local macho resonance. But his noncommittal investigative shop talk can't take the place of the truth. Most disappointing, the victim herself emerges as neither sympathetic nor compelling, a spoiled little rich girl who seems to care little for anyone except her daughter and herself. "The more we look at her, the uglier she gets," O'Keefe says of Worthington. Although Flook fleshes out various suspects, including Tony Jackett, the father of Worthington's child, and Tim Arnold, the spurned-lover-turned-friend who found Worthington's body. Flook seems to favor Arnold as the murderer, but who knows? This work will leave most readers with a sense of sadness and not much else. (July)
