Every Contact Leaves A Trace: A Novel
Much like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), Dymott’s debut novel is set in academia and features a neurotic group of friends. Alex Petersen, a successful lawyer and graduate of Worcester College, Oxford, is in the grip of grief after his young wife, Rachel, is killed during a school reunion. As Alex investigates her murder, becoming more well acquainted with her mentor, caring English professor Harry, and her aloof and difficult aunt, Evie, Alex realizes that he didn’t really know his wife. She had complicated dealings with the other two students in her Browning seminar, composed of equal parts scholarship and debauchery, and he suddenly realizes that she went to great lengths to keep him in the dark about the nature of her relationships. Dymott proves skillful on a number of fronts, including conjuring the mysteries of human nature and the cloistered environment of an elite university, but this novel would have been twice as good at half the length. Still, the author’s deft evocation of mood and place marks her as a writer to watch. --Joanne Wilkinson