CLAIRE CONSIDERS Saltwater by Katy Hays

CLAIRE CONSIDERS Saltwater by Katy Hay

“Saltwater” (Ballantine Books 2025) by Katy Hays will take readers on a long and fascinating journey—not just to the Isle of Capri, where it is set, but into the minds of two complex women, Helen and Lorna. On one hand, these two seem to have little in common—but on the other, they share everything that truly matters. The novel also demands a fair amount of time and attention to follow its twisting plot and layered mysteries—but that’s true of all great mystery/thrillers, isn’t it? And if you like your thriller/mystery with a generous helping of gothic, all the better:

Saltwater is atmospheric and gothic around nearly every bend in its plotline.

Those two women—Lorna and Helen—are excellent creations from the mind of the author, who reveals them in ever-deepening layers with such nuance and skill that readers will feel they know them—yet can still be surprised by what they do. They take turns narrating most of the story in their own distinctive voices.

Money, lies, and a long-dead woman open the story on Capri, as a hungover Helen Lingate—the daughter of a filthy-rich family with its own tragic mystery—discovers her friend and apparent co-conspirator Lorna is missing. The Lingate family is not only fabulously wealthy but also guards its privacy to a level just shy of paranoia. As will soon be revealed, this is not without good reason. The family fortune came from a morally bankrupt scheme of grand-scale fraud, which, of course, the Lingates have recast more favorably in their own mythology. Then there’s the lingering question of whether one of the two Lingate brothers killed his beautiful, glamorous wife by shoving her off a cliff.

The very first sentence sets the tone—“Money is my phantom limb.” And there in the first paragraph, the initial foreshadowing occurs with Helen’s further observation: “I saw how heavy the bag was when Lorna lifted it. Bulky with our cash.”

The second voice readers encounter is Lorna’s. If Helen’s opening doesn’t sweep readers in, Lorna’s will. When Lorna realizes in the opening pages of Saltwater that she is at sea, she says:

“The realization is accompanied by a familiar bland horror. The kind that always seems to whisper, Is this how I die?”

It turns out that Lorna is the assistant to Marcus Lingate, Helen’s uncle. Helen helped Lorna get the position after they became unlikely friends. Helen, who has no money of her own and is essentially a prisoner of her ever-controlling family and its wealth, seeks freedom. Lorna has a somewhat checkered past, with no riches, but also no one controlling her—or even caring about her. She notes that her life before Marcus involved “Odd jobs and no jobs, jobs that never made it onto my generously padded resume.”

Helen and Lorna both believe that if they can get enough money—by whatever means—they can finally be free to live happier lives. With that goal in mind, they travel to Capri with Marcus, Helen’s father, and other assorted fellow travelers. The Lingates return to Capri once a year in a kind of twisted ritual to establish their supposed innocence in the death of Helen’s mother. Her mother, Sarah, was “famously found dead” beneath one of Capri’s cliffs thirty years before the novel opens. Helen is haunted by the question of whether her father got away with murdering her mother. That question is the primary mystery of the story—but far from the only one.

There are many other characters, including the sinister and mysterious Stan Markowitz, with his long, sharp canines and air of danger; Freddy, Helen’s boyfriend who also has a history with Lorna; and the ever-intriguing, all-but-ghostlike Ramata. Still, it’s Helen and Lorna who dominate this story.

All in all, an excellent read. Cynical? Yes. Sprinkled with some implausibility? Also yes—but who cares when the story and characters are this good?

Katy Hays, who lives with her husband and dog in Olympic Valley, California, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters.