Free Rider by Janet Porter
Things that appear too simple never are — at least as far as top-notch thrillers go.
While zipping through the pages of Janet Porter’s intriguing and intricate debut psychological thriller Free Rider (TKO Rogue), the clues into a series of gruesome murders were heading in a certain direction. There had to be more, right?
There was. And I’m still trying to make sense of it all.
Gruesome Murder
Nineteen-year-old Violet DeLoache and her twin sister Khalika have grown up in a posh Westchester, NY estate previously owned by the girls’ parents but later the domain of their stepparents, Dick and Bianca. That is, until the stepparents are found brutally murdered in their home.
Previously, Bianca had been married to the girls’ father JeanLuc, who died from circumstances never fully explained. Dick and Bianca are described as “petty grifters,” involved in everything from child pornography to strip clubs. Initially it is felt that loan sharks committed the murders, but loan sharks typically don’t kill someone if he or she is the source of owed money.
It is within this seedy world (the stepparents, not Westchester) that the twins are raised — more so Violet, as Khalika moved out earlier to parts unknown.
The stepparents’ murders are not the only ones that remain unsolved, and there are signs that point to one killer.
It has taken several months, but Detective Mark Vincente follows the investigation and eventually locates Violet, whom he wants to question.
Complex Characters
The twins are an interesting pair, potentially taking their place alongside classic literary duos in such psycho thrillers as Tom Tryon’s The Other and V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic, to name a couple. The sisters profess their continued love for one another as Violet stays at the estate longer than Khalika before moving to a Soho loft in New York and working as a stripper. The free-spirited Khalika takes an earlier Bohemian route, with readers never quite sure where she is or where she stays but she’s apparently caught up in sordid activities such as fencing stolen goods and dealing pot.
“I knew Khalika worked in the deepest, most remote shadows, without distraction, without input from the keepers of order,” says Violet.
Reflecting on her choices, Violet adds, “My sister could never accept this — that I remained in that house, with Dick and Bianca, and she has worked on me tirelessly to get me to see it her way. That’s why crazy parents get away with so much for so long. The kids are scared to tell, afraid to lose what they have, get stuck with something even worse.”
Meanwhile, Mark is a subtle but dogged investigator, describing his work as “trying to put a puzzle together where the pieces have been scattered like gory confetti.” Eventually, he and Violet develop a romantic interest. Is it real or is it his way to get closer to his ultimate quest?
Dark and Twisted Path
For lovers of gore, horror and the dark side of things, in Free Rider you’ve come to the right place. But Porter’s work is so much more than that. For starters, it is a complex psychological study of two sisters, their slightly different paths, their inner thoughts and their resultant actions. The author does a marvelous job of getting into their heads and souls.
On another level, well, all whodunnits have their resolutions, don’t they? Yet I must admit that as I came to the moment of truth in Free Rider, my mouth was agape, I stared into space, and said to myself I better read that again. What a strange path this one takes!
In writing Free Rider, Porter said she keeps in mind the words of the dead guy in the movie “Ghost,” doomed to ride the subway for eternity after jumping in front of a train: “You take all your emotions, all your pain, all your love, all your passion, all your rage. Just push it all the way down into the pit of your stomach. And then let it explode, like a reactor! Pow!”
“Pow” is right. Pick up Free Rider and you’ll know what we mean.
About Janet Porter:
Janet Porter was born in Pittsburgh and immediately began trying to injure herself by roller skating over broken pavement. Subsequently, the family moved to New York City, where the family lived in a series of ramshackle apartments in the borough of Queens. Janet has no writing credentials except those of anybody who has processed the daily grind and decided to fictionalize it. That is not to say that every incident in this book is entirely fictitious; it is not. It is merely disguised to protect the guilty, of which she is one. She lives by the words, “Write the book you want to read.” Janet lives in the Siuslaw National Forest, with her accomplice, five horses, four dogs, two cats, and a murder of crows.
