Book Review: In 'All This Could Be Yours,' a novelist on book tour is stalked by a stranger

Fictional author Tess Calloway quit a well-paying job to pursue her dream of becoming a writer

Author Hank Phillippi Ryan has written a crime novel titled “All This Could Be Yours” about an author on tour to promote a crime novel titled “All This Could Be Yours.” As Ryan says in an endnote, it’s very meta.

The fictional author is Tess Calloway, a woman and mother who quit a well-paying corporate job where she felt “invisible” in order to pursue her dream of becoming a novelist. The hero of Tess’s book is Annabelle, a woman who defies the limitations society places of women in order to do what she wishes with her “one life.”

As Tess’s book tour opens, her debut novel is already on The New York Times bestseller list. At each stop, she is greeted by adoring crowds, mostly women who chant “One life!” and proclaim that Annabelle inspired them to change their own.

Nevertheless, the tour is exhausting. Every day takes Tess to a new city, a different hotel, a fresh crowd of admirers. She has to rely on FaceTime to keep in touch with her husband and two young children, and her vivid imagination tortures her with fears about what could be going wrong at home.

Before long, however, odd things start happening on the tour. She finds a mysterious locket in a hotel room night stand. At another stop, someone breaks into her room and leaves a pair of earrings. A sheet of paper with a vaguely threatening message is slid under her door. Someone takes her carry-on from an airplane overhead bin.

Worse, Tess starts getting uncomfortable personal questions about her past at bookstore appearances and on social media — uncomfortable because she has long harbored a dark secret. It’s one that she fears would destroy her new career and her family if it were ever revealed.

In Tess, Ryan has created a likeable, compelling, complex character who struggles to come to terms with her past and finds the courage to confront the danger she faces. The story starts slowly, the tension building page by page toward a series of twists that readers are unlikely to see coming.

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Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”

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