The Diver

Knight’s hit-or-miss debut mixes a legal drama with supernatural elements to disjointed effect. Peter, a new paralegal at a firm in Evansville. Ill., is asked to help investigate the death of Robert Forrester, who recently drowned while scuba diving with his wife, Marta Winters, in Lake Michigan. Robert’s body has yet to be recovered, and his sister, Evelyn Forrester, who thinks the drowning was no accident, hires the law firm to find proof that Marta is guilty of murder. Peter is tasked with interviewing the dead man’s neighbors, but instead, on impulse, he goes to Marta’s house to speak to her. At first, she rebuffs him, but then, after learning of his mother’s experiences paying a psychic to contact his recently deceased brother, she invites him in to take part in an occult ritual to reach Robert. Peter follows Marta down a rabbit hole of paranormal developments, whose nature it would be a spoiler to reveal. The author has a knack for nasty invective, and the book springs to life whenever one character reads the riot act to another. But there are too many elements—Peter’s mother’s disappearance, Marta’s Vertigo-like makeover of Peter into her late husband’s image—that don’t dramatically cohere. This bites off more than it can chew. (Nov.)