The Fury by Alex Michaelides

The Fury

By Alex Michaelides

Celadon Books 2024

Gunshots hammer through torrential wind, bullets meet flesh, a figure collapses, blood pools. A cut and dry murder opening, wonderful, roll out the characters and let the search for clues commence. Alex Michaelides snickers behind a curtain.

Elliot Chase, successful playwright, and bestie with Oscar-winning actress Lana Farrar narrates The Fury from an indeterminate point in the future. On page one he extends a welcoming hand to the reader, “You and I should be sitting together on a couple of barstools, right now, as I tell you this tale.” The fourth wall is shattered, and we are washed in Tom Ripley vibes. A-lister Lana, owner of Aura, a private Greek island, is planning an Easter getaway. Elliot the playwright/narrator is invited, as well as Lana’s teenage son, Leo (wannabe actor), husband Jason (movie producer), and longtime friend Kate (theater actor). Casting is established, a rich, Grecian atmosphere is the main set, and voilà, the show opens.

The Fury features theatrical characters and is told in the five-act structure common in classical and Shakespearean dramas. After the gunpowder-laden opening hook of an insinuated murder, the story rewinds. Flashbacks occur in Hollywood and throughout London, but largely on Aura the day before the shooting. Snippets of story are doled out with strategic intention; The Fury is a whydunit as much as a whodunit. Nikos, a loner groundskeeper, and Agathi, Lana’s mystical assistant-at-everything, were also on-site when shots were fired. And, convenient to any tidy, locked-room mystery, a monstrous storm prevented all maritime movement on the night of the shooting.

Heavy smoking, drinking, and drugs lace many scenes, but no matter, our beautiful forty-somethings look a decade younger. Early on we suspect Kate of having an affair with Lana’s husband. Questions arise about if the relationship is true, and if so, who else knows. If Lana’s aware, what better setting than her own island to confront them? Chunks of plot and past are revealed as narrator Elliot reminds the reader with military regularity to believe nothing with statements such as:

I stress all this so that, if at any point during this narrative I mislead you, you will understand that it is by accident, not design—because I am clumsily skewing the events too much from my own point of view. An occupational hazard, perhaps, when one narrates a story in which one happens to play a minor role.

Flashbacks and unrelenting foreshadowing dominate acts one through four. Short chapters punctuate a needlessly messy narrative as Elliot jumps from first to third person. What the reader is meant to believe morphs every few pages and our characters’ motivations for the same events change with every retelling. The structure is reminiscent of An Instance of the Fingerpost, but these instances exist solely to raise a middle finger at conventional storytelling.

The reader is never provided a likeable character to root for, certainly not Elliot who can’t decide whether to depict himself as a smooth-operating Svengali or a damaged wreck. We daydream of iconic puppet master Conchis from John Fowles’ The Magus. An establishing scene includes husband Jason pressuring Lana to sign financial documents without allowing her to read them, a nod to The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins’ 19th century classic work of crime fiction.

Chapters conclude with promises that barely pay off like, “Twenty-four hours, during which, as you shall see, a great deal happened,” and, “This is where it started. This is where the countdown began.” Clichés abound as well, including zingers, “The truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction,” and, “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Michaelides’ debut, The Silent Patient, overflows with innovation and provided contemporary fiction one of its finest inverted-corkscrew endings. The Maidens, the author’s second novel, garnered less universal appreciation but still possessed smatterings of Michaelides magic. Unfortunately, The Fury cares more about being different than well told, resulting in a convoluted story driven by cheap tricks. It’s a master illusionist so meta that the performance is to stand in place. Michaelides even includes a stunt to dodge criticism of the quality of the book’s plot and prose. The finale does not shock or satisfy, it cheats.

Fans will take some solace spotting characters from previous novels in small but crucial roles in The Fury. Perhaps the MLU (Michaelides Literary Universe) is forming, and his next offer will revert to offering superhero-level thrills.

Ryan Davison is a scientist and writer currently living in Lisbon.