Black-Eyed Susans is the third book by [Julia] Heaberlin, whose byline you may remember from the Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News (and, full disclosure, from this magazine). But it’s her first to be issued in hardcover, meaning her publisher is betting—or hoping, anyway—that she’s ready to break free of the thriller genre and bring in that Gone Girl money.
Heaberlin’s “novel of suspense” only superficially resembles Gillian Flynn’s blockbuster (mostly in that its time-hopping narrative is funnier than you’d expect). But if readers looking for the next Gone Girl do pick it up, I guarantee they won’t put it down. Because the story—broadly: the only survivor of a serial killer may have helped convict the wrong man, and now she has to track down the real culprit—is a classic page-turner. A thriller. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Heaberlin will be at The Wild Detectives on August 23, in conversation with author Jenny Milchman and signing books.
A version of this book review appears in the August issue of D Magazine.
Black-Eyed Susans, by Julia Heaberlin (Ballantine Books, $26)
