Susie Steiner, the author of the Manon Bradshaw trilogy that I just finished reading, died in 2022. Her plots may ostensibly have been all about dying (sometimes in the most gruesome and pathetic of circumstances), but her real preoccupations were really about the difficulties of living. How hard it is to grow old, how painful it can be to raise children, how frustrating work can be, and how tough marriages and families are. Her ability to write about such things without preaching and without talking down to readers, and to do it all in such an entertaining and empathetic way, is the heart of Steiner’s appeal.

The final book in the series, Remain Silent, was my least favorite. The flipping between past and present and the multiple perspectives were discordant and fractured my attention. In some way that I cannot pinpoint it all felt rushed and less cared for than its predecessors. That’s not to say I disliked the book, just that I felt disappointed after the highs of the previous two.