Mike Garrett. Innocence Denied. Castle Rock CO: Cross Link, 2018. Print.
Innocence Denied can best be described as a calm thriller. It has the elements of a typical crime/legal novel, but it is gently paced. It may be an interesting situation to some readers, but it is no page turner.
Larissa Baxter is out on bail, having been arrested for murdering her husband. Like the old Columbo television shows, we see the crime at the beginning, so we know who did it. An old friend of Mrs. Baxter’s father named Derrick Walton stages a “kidnapping” and takes her away from her home in Arizona to his home in Alabama.
Their escape is successful. There is no pursuit. Most of the tension in the story comes from Mrs. Baxter having to conceal her identity and hide out until everything blows over. An awkward understanding develops between the two of them, but this is not a romance. The author also tries to convince us there is no “Stockholm syndrome” either.
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously wrote that any reader or any audience has to commit a “willing suspension of disbelief” in response to any work of art. Innocence Denied requires that. A widower in his fifties, completely unknown to a beautiful socialite in her thirties, convinces her to escape with him to a place she has never been. It almost sounds like a teen fantasy for an older man.
Granted, Mrs. Baxter is desperate. She is accused of a crime she has not committed, and her dead husband’s family is out for revenge. Still, it is hard to imagine anyone willingly going along with a stranger as she does. Mr. Walton is a gentleman when most of the men in Mrs. Baxter’s life have not been so. It was very hard to suspend my disbelief. At times it almost sounded creepy.
Even though the overarching question concerns Mrs. Baxter’s innocence, the story that unfolds is mostly about Mr. Walton. Not only does he have a strange past, but he has some personal secrets he is hiding not only from his captive but from his sister, who perhaps reflects the reader’s response to everything—she has figured out that Mrs. Baxter is the fugitive accused of murder, but she keeps mum to protect her brother.
A reader who is willing to suspend his or her unbelief enough might enjoy this tale. The main setting in an Alabama lake house is pleasant. Mr. Walton makes it appear that his intentions are honorable. Especially with the current #MeToo movement, other readers might simply deny that everything is innocent.
Disclosure of Material: We received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through the BookCrash book review program, which requires an honest, though not necessarily positive, review.