The Cage

 

As the blurb says, this one started off with a BANG - both literally and figuratively!

Two women, Lucy Barton-Jones, head of HR, and Shay Lambert, a newly hired corporate lawyer for fashion conglomerate Claudine de Martineau International, or CDMI, step into an elevator together on the 30th floor one cold February night.  On the trip down, the lights go out, the elevator stalls, trapping both women, and at some point a shot rings out.  Only one woman eventually emerges and the other is either a victim by her own hand … or the other woman’s. 

What’s the truth? Well, you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right, so the fun is less about that answer and more about the path that gets you there.  I felt the book makes enough intimations of where it’s heading that I wasn’t surprised by the ending.  

For me, the typically burning question of the “who” wasn’t what was driving me through the pages.  It was “why” and the “how” - the mystery and motive - behind CDMI’s bigwigs and why they were trying to frame one of these women for the other’s death. That, as my husband likes to say, is “the spicy meatball” that made this so enjoyable for me.

After hearing friends say that there was a lot of legalese and corporate talk in this, I was already expecting to have to No-Doze my way through this (no offense to my legal and corporate friends!) I’m not saying I didn’t struggle with the legal lingo, and I’m completely out of my depth when it comes to understanding the white collar world, but despite that I found this to be very engaging.  It started strong, got a little bogged down and slow in the middle, then really ramped up the tension and intrigue in the final third.  

Author Bonnie Kistler is a former lawyer, so her legal knowledge shines and adds authenticity to the story.  If you like a slow-burn legal mystery/thriller with global intrigue, where you have to figure out who’s playing who, with an ever-changing upper hand, you might have fun with this. As a bonus, it has a clever epilogue that actually works!

★★★ ½ (rounded to 4) 

Thanks to Harper Publishing, NetGalley and author Bonnie Kistler for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions.  It’s due for publication on February 15, 2022.