Mikita Brottman - An Unexplained Death

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A bit mixed

I found this an odd mixture of the compelling and the slightly dull, so I find it hard to give an overall view.

An Unexplained Death is the true story of Mikita Brottman’s quest, lasting over a decade, to find the story behind the death of Rey Rivera. Rivera was an ostensibly happy, successful man who fell to his death from the Belvedere building in Baltimore where Brottman lives. There seem to be a lot of mysterious cover-ups and possibly shady dealing in the background, so she is sceptical about the prevailing view that Rivera’s death was suicide.

Among the story of her investigations we get a lot of historical detail about the Belvedere (formerly a swish hotel) and its many suicides, suicide in general, Rey’s links with a company selling possibly dodgy financial advice, Brottman’s personal internal life and so on. It is by turns fascinating and slightly tedious, and her conclusions are a little unsatisfactory; they fit the physical evidence in a way that competing ideas do not, but don’t explain all the odd, shady background stuff which was the reason for her interest in the first place.

Brottman does write very well, which kept me reading. As a couple of examples, writing of hotels’ attitude to suicide she says; “...employees are instructed to be alert for guests who appear agitated and distraught, or for anyone lingering suspiciously in an elevated place. Such vigilance may appear altruistic, but human kindness is often simply a side effect of liability prevention.” Or of trying to find out more about Rey on-line, “I have now spent years of my life following Internet threads by angry speculators, investors, muckrakers, and “independent thinkers” of dubious sanity, a bizarre path of loosely connected breadcrumbs that has led me to the edge of nowhere and back again.” These readable, pithy comments made it well worth persevering, but I did find myself skimming occasionally.

An Unexplained Death is a curious mixture; I found that I wanted to read to the end but was rather glad when I go there so I could go on to something else. I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because it is well written, but my recommendation comes with reservations.

(My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley.)