Murder Bimbo, Rebecca Novack’s paranoid thriller novel, features a textbook case of an unreliable narrator. The unnamed protagonist tells us the same story, three different ways.
The basics of the story are usually pretty similar: She’s a sex worker who is recruited to kill a politician. But the details are always different. Was she recruited by CIA agents, or by some weird randos, or by white supremacists? How did she kill the politician, who she always calls Meat Neck? How does she feel about what she’s done?
I really enjoyed the first third of Murder Bimbo but I have to admit the conceit failed to work its magic on me. As soon as the story started over the second time and the narrative became a kind of spot-the-difference game, the compelling characterization and powerful inevitability of the story came to an ear-piercing halt, and it never fully started up again.
I do think Murder Bimbo would make a spectacular movie in the right hands. The visual cues of each telling of the central story would be fascinating to watch. But as a thriller, it stops to shoot itself in the foot twice, and it never limps to a satisfactory finish line, just staggering around in circles until the book runs out of pages.