AN INVISIBLE WOMAN

A Novel By Anne Streiber

Forge Books: 288 pp; $23.95


The Importance of Being Invisible

Reviewed by Paula L. Woods, December 19, 2004, Washington Post

It seems the world will never be right for Kealy Ryerson, heroine of Anne Strieber's debut thriller, An Invisible Woman (Forge, $23.95). A rich, pampered society matron, Kealy nevertheless feels that the world has passed her by in favor of younger denizens of New York City's concrete jungle. She notes with anger that she has become invisible even to the city's construction workers. "He's mine, she screams in her heart" at younger women when a workman whistles at them and not her. "Don't you dare take my pig from me!" But Kealy's invisibility becomes an asset when her husband, Jimmy, defense lawyer for Sal Bonacori and several other Mafia clients, calls one day and says words she hoped she'd never hear: "Get out of town. Right now. Take a plane. Run." Minutes later, Jimmy is shot dead while having lunch with the district attorney, and in short order Jimmy's favorite PI, Al Sager, is also murdered. Wildly afraid, Kealy summons her children, Allison and Mark, home from school, with every intention of following her husband's orders.

But how? Unsafe in their Upper East Side apartment, suspicious of the police who are watching them, the Ryersons take refuge in Brooklyn with Lushawn Davis, a friend of Allison's, and her poor and dysfunctional family, and try to develop a plan to leave the country. Removing her make-up and Fifth Avenue garb, Kealy encounters invisibility where she didn't expect it: among her friends and the police. The same thing happens to her children when they don the Davis kids' clothes. So disguised, the Ryersons hide in plain sight while they attend Jimmy's funeral, try to recover bearer bonds from his office and stage a break-in at Jimmy's partner's home in search of the bonds. But with every ill-conceived step, the danger heightens and the Ryersons are forced to run and adopt even more desperate measures. In the process, Kealy realizes that the socialites she had come to trust are no friends and that the people she'd learned to fear as "dangerous" -- such as the black Davis family and mobster Bonacori -- are the ones who have her back covered.

Unfortunately Strieber resorts to many woman-in-jeopardy conventions and presents stereotyped characters. Moreover, the plotting is weak, especially an improbable romance between Kealy and her ex-husband, who is conveniently an NYPD chief of detectives, and a denouement that puts readers face-to-face with the real villains too late in the game. But Strieber has a pleasing writing style, and her early scenes show enough promise that one hopes she gets another chance.