Don’t Let Him In

Every reader has encountered books that require a leap of faith. Could Claire really have bounced through the centuries? Wouldn’t shifters face endless wardrobe malfunctions? And surely someone would have noticed all those carts disappearing into Platform 9¾.

When fiction is done well, those leaps are effortless. You know it’s improbable, but in the hands of a skilled author, the world and characters feel solid enough to hold your belief. The unlikely becomes, for the length of the story, entirely plausible.

Then there are the “NFW” books—No F**king Way novels. These stories ask readers to accept scenarios so absurd that the world they present collapses under scrutiny. Lisa Jewell’s Don’t Let Him In is a spectacular example of this. Set in modern times, the plot hinges on a premise so implausible—particularly in an age of smartphones, CCTV, and stringent banking regulations—that it’s impossible to take seriously. That said, it’s also a wild, entertaining ride.

The story centers on Nick Radcliffe, a preternaturally charming man who manipulates women with an almost superhuman talent. As the novel begins, Nick’s in his late mid 50s and is determinedly working his way into the heart and home of Nina Swann, the widow of successful restauranteur Paddy Swann. A year ago, Paddy was pushed onto train tracks by a mentally ill young man. Now his wife and his daughter Ash are trying to get on with their lives–Nina is running her husband’s dining empire and Ash is trying to get her life back on track after a mental breakdown. One day, a year after Paddy’s death, Nick Radcliffe contacts Nina. He sends her a lighter he says belonged, years ago, to Paddy with whom he briefly worked. One thing leads to another and soon Nick is in the Swann home, charming Nina and making Ash very suspicious of his motives.  

An hour or so up the coast (the book is set in England), there’s another woman whose story we learn. Martha is an ambitious and talented florist whose husband Al routinely goes missing. He says it’s for work but Martha is beginning to wonder what on earth is really going on. He disappears for days at a time, not answering calls or texts, and though he always has some densely worded reasonable sounding excuse, increasingly Martha struggles to believe him. 

Jewell’s narration offers us alternating points of view–Ash’s, Nick’s, Al’s, and Martha’s–goes back and forth in time.

Nick is a fascinating, absolutely horrible man whose talent with women is genuinely a superpower. Unfortunately, since this isn’t a Marvel movie, Nick’s cleverness relies on all the women–other than Ash and Jane, an old love of her father’s Ash enlists to aid her in taking down Nick–being clueless idiots. Nick can, as the saying goes, get away with murder but he’s just so charming and gifted at telling women exactly what they want to hear that no one seems to notice the giant holes in the stories he tells. 

I get it. It’s hard to write suspense in a time where everyone is walking around with a super computer in their hands but, dammit, it can be done. In Don’t Let Him In, Jewel offers her readers her usual breakneck plot, breathless twists, and shocking (actually, not so much if you ask me) reveals. But this reader kept shaking her head and thinking no f**king way.