Aalysa Morales’ debut novel, Indecipherable, is a psychological thriller set in Baton Rouge and centering on the experiences of a group of college students in 2004. Although described as “Southern Gothic,” I admit I was a bit disappointed that the novel didn’t really have much Gothic atmosphere, and nothing supernatural happens, but that didn’t take away from the compelling story of a decades-old murder mystery and the twists that follow as the characters try to solve the murder while putting their own lives at risk.
The novel’s two main characters, Lorelai and Cordelia, are best friends who live together. Lorelai is a lesbian with an ex-girlfriend, Kayce, who cheated on her with a boy. Lorelai is angry at Kayce, but eventually will realize she needs her help. Cordelia is an exotic dancer, and Lorelai is in love with her, but so is Thomas, a young man who works at the college library’s archives.
The plot begins when the girls acquire an old game of Clue from a secondhand store. Inside they find hair from a deceased girl, which leads them to investigating a murder from twenty years before. It turns out two girls who were friends were murdered on the same college campus in 1984, and their killer was never caught (a situation that eerily foreshadows the friendship of Lorelai and Cordelia and the danger they will soon find themselves in). Cordelia wants to get rid of the evidence, finding it creepy, but Lorelai, concerned the murder might be a cold case and the evidence could help solve it, decides to investigate further before going to the police.
Lorelai visits the campus archives, searching for old newspaper articles and other information about the deceased girls. Because the archives are off limits to most students, she enlists Thomas’ help to get access. At the archives, she also makes the acquaintance of a man named McAllister. He has worked there since before the two girls were murdered. He remembers the victims and shares information with Lorelai.
As Lorelai continues to investigate, she decides to get Kayce involved. This leads to Kayce’s boyfriend, Luca, his friend, Jacques, and several other students also becoming interested in the murders. Their interest grows when Thomas gets fired and they realize the killer from decades ago is trying to prevent evidence from surfacing and might be ready to strike again. While the various characters’ investigations are carried on separately at first, by the end of the novel, all the threads come together.
Little do the characters realize the murderer is watching their every move. He is disgusted to learn that the evidence in the Clue game, which got lost when he moved, has surfaced, resulting in him again being under possible scrutiny. The memories of his former pleasure in murdering the two girls also returns in his new feelings for Lorelai. He befriends her without suspecting her his true motives, which at first are to make sure he is not caught, but it doesn’t take him long to fall in love with her.
I won’t give away more of the plot, but I will say I found the introspective moments inside the killer’s mind to be the most interesting. If the killer is not quite as creepy as in Michael Connelly’s The Poet, he stands out for originality in terms of his mental state. I guessed early on who the killer was, and Morales does not keep it a secret for long. This revelation allows us to watch him watch the girls and see how his madness slowly increases. I also enjoyed watching the relationship dynamics between all of the characters. I was reminded of my own college days and the network of people I knew, including friends of friends of friends. The way the novel treated the youthful confusion of the main characters in regard to their romantic feelings, sexuality, and unrequited love all felt true to life and their age group.
The novel opens and ends with a trial scene, but Morales keeps us guessing who the narrator of these scenes is until the end. The trial frame serves to engage us in the story before we travel back to the events leading up to the trial. What happens at the trial itself was especially unexpected. While some parts of the plot were a bit predictable, the concluding twists were far from it. Readers will be stunned by the dramatic rollercoaster ending. I was shocked, relieved, and shocked again. On the final page, I was left questioning what was real and what was not, and whether the narrator was hinting at a sequel to come.
For a first novel, Indecipherable has a few to-be-expected flaws. Sometimes the writing was a tad clunky or the tense shifted, but the characters were fully imagined, and while so many characters were a bit hard to keep track of, in the end, everything came together with clarity. I also loved the characters’ names, which were not that usual—I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be named Bonnibelle—and I wondered if they reflected Southern tastes. I’ve never been to Louisiana, unfortunately, but I appreciated the Southern elements in the novel. I wish the novel had more description of the buildings—a lot could have been done to make the library and houses creepier and add to the Gothic atmosphere—but perhaps that would have slowed down the story’s pace.
I congratulate Morales on her first novel. She shines at creating villains far scarier than any ghost would have been, and she has a knack for keeping us guessing until the end. Indecipherable: A Psychological Thriller is available in paperback and ebook formats at Amazon.
____________________________________
Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature, Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City, and The Mysteries of Marquette: A Novel, plus many other fiction and nonfiction titles. Visit Tyler at http://www.GothicWanderer.com, http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com, and http://www.MarquetteFiction.com.
The Gothic Wanderer