The Interpreter, by Brooke Robinson

Revelle Lee is full of secrets. She never talks about her past. She never talks about why she’s so desperate to adopt a child. She doesn’t even talk about one of the languages she speaks and refuses to interpret for child protective services. It takes most of The Interpreter, by Brooke Robinson, for Revelle’s secrets to shake out. It will also take stalking, blackmail, and a lot of paranoia to loose those secrets.

Revelle Lee is also a strange character. On the one hand, she takes pride in her reputation as a scrupulous interpreter in ten different languages. (She speaks eleven but pretends not to know German.) She emotionlessly translates for London courts, the Metropolitan police, business people—anyone her employer sends her to except for jobs involving children. At the same time, we know that Revelle is a liar. She’s created a life she can’t properly afford so that she can adopt a young boy named Elliot. Her facile rationalizations about bending the truth to impress her social worker are our first and biggest red flag that Revelle isn’t the rule-abider she makes out to be.

The wheels start to come off of Revelle’s schemes when she receives word from her social worker that Elliot’s birth mother is contesting the adoption. If the court rules against her, Revelle could lose custody of a boy she’s grown to love. Although her social worker isn’t very concerned, Revelle is petrified with fear. Shortly after this, she learns that Sandra, the woman she hired to sit for Elliot while she worked, has been murdered. Revelle struck me as the kind of person who can only really function if they are firmly in control of their lives. These two pieces of news rock Revelle’s sense of control—especially when strange things start to happen that damage Revelle’s credibility with her social worker. When pure chance sends Revelle to interpret for a homeless Polish man who might know who’s responsible for Sandra’s death, Revelle bends the truth again to destroy an alibi and send a man to prison. She justifies this by reminding herself about all the cases she interpreted for where the guilty walked free. She’s only nudging the police in what she’s pretty sure is the right direction.

Here and there we also get brief chapters narrated by someone else. This person also needs rigid control in order to keep herself going. She has even fewer inhibitions about doing things the way she wants them done. This woman, we learn, is the sister of a pregnant drug addict who lost a boy some years before. And this woman, we learn, is determined to take Elliot away from Revelle by any means necessary. It doesn’t take long to work out that this unknown enemy is the one sending drug dealers to Revelle’s house, messing with Revelle’s court appointments, and eventually blackmailing Revelle to deliberately misinterpret during her jobs.

Up until this point, I was completely gripped by The Interpreter. I loved piecing together Revelle’s backstory from the few hints she dropped about her mother, about her lost friendships, about why she refuses to translate for children or use German. I also had a good time trying to work out why someone was so determined to ruin Revelle’s life and take Elliot from her. But the closer I got to the end of the book, the more ludicrous things got. Revelle has unbelievably good luck getting out of her nemesis’s traps until said nemesis decides to go for a physical attack. The Interpreter lost me when it shifted from psychological thriller to flat out thriller. I would’ve rated this book a lot higher if it wasn’t for the messy, implausible last quarter.