I love a good mystery that turns and twists and keeps you guessing. I absolutely hate mysteries where I can tell in Chapter 3 who did it, how, and why. To keep the pages turning for me, I need to be wrong about everything until the end. I can honestly say The Mask Collectors was so well written it made me feel dumb. I couldn’t guess the who or the why.
This debut novel from Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer’s accomplishes something that all great mystery stories attempt to do: putting completely relatable characters into a mystery which leads to extraordinary circumstances. The mystery and suspense in this story do not let up until the very end. The deeper I got into the story, the faster I was reading. The well-rounded characters and layers of mystery kept me awake and reading long past my bedtime. If you’re a suspense reader devotee, this tightly-written and deeply layered novel will keep you turning pages and will keep you guessing until the very end.
The novel begins at a campground in rural New Jersey where the alumni of an international boarding school have gathered for a reunion. When classmate and journalist Angie Osborne goes missing, a search party finds her lifeless body in the woods off a hiking trail. Duncan McCloud, an anthropologist married to a former student attending the reunion, notices similarities between the death scene and a thovile – a Sri Lankan healing ceremony.
Duncan and his wife, Dr. Grace McCloud, a Sri Lankan, are professionals in their careers, and are dealing with infertility issues. Grace has had several miscarriages, even though the doctors continue to tell her that nothing is biologically wrong and there is no reason she cannot carry a child.
On top of all that, Duncan has recently been laid off from his professorship at a smaller college, and is taking a job at Cinasat, a pharmaceutical giant ran by Bentley Hyland (another alum at the reunion and former flame of Grace). Bentley tells Duncan that they’re working on a new drug based on the placebo effect and will need to apply his knowledge of Sri Lankan thoviles to their new drug.
Bentley explains that Duncan’s job at Cinasat will be working with an eminent medical academic to study the medical effects and scientific explanations for the thoviles in Sri Lanka. If Cinasat could create a drug that used the placebo effect and made patients believe they were getting better, than a huge payday was in store for all involved.
During Duncan’s discussion with medical academic Derek Weinberg, Weinberg lets it be known that the drug is working in test groups suffering from medical and psychological disorders such as infertility and chronic fatigue syndrome. This piques Duncan’s interest as his mother suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, and has for years. Weinberg knows what he’s saying as this information will help keep Duncan’s interest in their project, enforce his non-disclosure agreement about Cinasat and the company’s ongoing ventures, as well as use Duncan to make sure the scientific development of this medication goes as planned.
Shortly after starting his new job, Bentley sends Duncan to Sri Lanka under vague circumstances and Grace begins receiving messages that everything she knows about Duncan’s work trip is a lie. On arrival, Bentley tells Duncan that Cinasat’s competitor has information from leaks within their company and needs to send Duncan and Janie, Bentley’s nine-year-old daughter, to a safe house for security reasons. Once there, Duncan and Janie are essentially imprisoned with no phone and no contact with the outside. Grace doesn’t even know if Duncan made it safely to Sri Lanka.
While waiting for word from Duncan, Grace begins investigating Cinasat and the circumstances around Angie’s death. The more she uncovers, the more reason she has to believe that her husband is in danger overseas. With the introduction of each new character Grace encounters, you get to wonder if they’re the murderer, or if you’ve already met the murderer chapters back. Many of Grace’s leads find literal dead ends when associates of Angie and Cinasat also end up deceased. When the body count grows higher, Grace begins to realize that Angie’s death wasn’t a simple heart attack as the medical examiner stated. Grace’s investigations lead her to follow her husband to Sri Lanka in search of the truth behind the serial murders.
The title of the book comes from Duncan seeing Sri Lankan ceremonial masks in the lobby of Cinasat. These masks play a huge part in Grace’s realization that something isn’t correct with Cinasat’s handling of Duncan’s new job and his travel to Sri Lanka. The timing of a photograph taken of Angie in Cinasat’s lobby is in question when Grace and a friend helping the investigation notice that the mask in the background of the picture is different than the one hanging in the lobby.
The author of this story is not only Sri Lankan, but a psychology professor in New York. In The Mask Collectors you sense how much she loves her homeland in the beautiful descriptions of the Sri Lankan scenery. You also get a wonderful glimpse into the psychology behind the placebo effect. You start to question if the medicines you take really work, or only work because we think they work.
The structure of the book is also very interesting as each chapter alternates between the two main characters’ points of view as the timeline stays consistent. Switching points of view every other chapter lets the reader in on more than the characters know and deepens the uncertainty that everything will turn out well in the end.
Purchase your copy of The Mask Collectors from Amazon here.
