For someone who hates secrets, Las Vegas hairdresser Lucy Rey is about to be faced with a whole bunch of them. After discovering that her fiancé has been cheating on her with someone from his improv class, Lucy finds herself short on funds and desperate for a change of scenery. Enter a most unusual job a Bearer of Bad News.
Sure, it’s a little weird, but Lucy’s employer is wealthy beyond compare, so who can blame her for wanting to outsource? Even if the job description is short on details and the bad news sounds more like a vaguely worded threat, Lucy can’t say no to the an-all-expenses-paid trip to the Italian Dolomites plus a generous bonus if she proves she’s found her client’s sister and delivered the message. Then she learns that her mission is just the tip of the iceberg.
Launched into a world of betrayal and greed involving eighty-year-old secrets, stolen jewels, and a World War II-era mystery, Lucy is in way over her head. And she’s connected to this story in ways she never could have imagined.
By Naomi
On Wednesday, July 23rd, ABC will be hosting an afternoon talk with author Elisabeth Dini, about her debut novel Bearer of Bad News.
Bearer of Bad News is the story of Lucy Rey, whose fiancé of four years cheated on her. She doesn’t like the apartment she lives in and she doesn’t like her job as a hairdresser in Las Vegas, but to leave both she needs money, and fast. When she happens to come across a social media ad looking for a Bearer of Bad News™, which includes all expenses paid for a trip to Italy to deliver bad news to a socialite’s sister, Lucy says ‘why not’. Does she know where to find the sister? No. Does she know what the bad news is? Also no. But Lucy is no stranger to complicated family dynamics, being estranged from her Hollywood-star grandmother, and she is highly motivated to receive the $25.000 bonus upon delivery of the bad news.
The premise requires some suspension of disbelief, but it’s a credit to the writing that that doesn’t take very long. As a reader, I wanted to root for Lucy, who is a complex, real character with flaws and hopes and dreams. Her narration easily won me over, even though she makes some questionable decisions at times. The book is well written and easy to read (and keep reading). The mystery (besides “what the heck is going on”), is about an emerald necklace that has been missing for decades, since World War II. The chapters from Lucy’s point of view are interspersed with excerpts and interviews, relating to the mystery at hand. These were a little confusing to me at first, because there are lots of names and different narrators and timelines, but it was intriguing nonetheless. It’s clear the author has done her research on women in World War II, which you can read about in the Author’s Note. While the mystery didn’t feel quite as urgent at the beginning of the story, it becomes much more fascinating as we get more and more hints, and more characters become involved. There’s a satisfying conclusion to the story of the emerald necklace that I didn’t see coming, but looking back all the clues were there.
Engaging mystery aside, Bearer of Bad News is as much about Lucy discovering who she really is and what she wants out of life. She learns to come to terms with (and heals from) her past, and embraces living in the now. There’s an opening left for more stories about Lucy, but Bearer of Bad News stands very well on its own.
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