The Note

November 18, 2024
A prank goes wrong in this disappointing standalone from bestseller Burke (Find Me). Law professor May Hanover jumps at the opportunity to meet her two best friends, commercial real estate heiress Kelsey Ellis and renowned musician Lauren Berry, for a weekend getaway in the Hamptons. Frustrated by a couple who steals their parking space at a restaurant, the women write a cryptic note (“He’s cheating. He always does”) on a napkin and leave it on the strangers’ car. On the last day of their trip, they learn that David Smith, the driver of the car, has gone missing. When the NYPD show up at May’s building in Manhattan, she attempts to clear the air, but the police remain suspicious—owing, in part, to each woman’s involvement in heavily publicized scandals: Lauren has been engaged in a decades-long affair with a married Texas oilman; May suffered a breakdown on a New York City subway platform that went viral; and Kelsey’s estranged husband was gunned down five years earlier by an unknown killer. Patient readers will enjoy the clever conclusion, but each woman’s backstory is given so much space that it significantly slackens the narrative tension, and there’s no one to root for among the unpleasant cast. Burke has done better. Agent: Sloan Harris, CAA. (Jan.)Correction: A previous version of this review quoted the wrong note written by the main characters.