The Business Trip, by Jessie Garcia, is a new suspense story with lots of twists and an appealing murderous motive. This came close to being a top thriller, but some parts were too explicitly spelled out, in a way that felt repetitive and anti-climactic.
That’s about all I can say without any spoilers slipping out, so stop here until you’ve read the book!
Jasmine sneaks away from her terrible boyfriend while he’s asleep, taking a suitcase full of dirty clothes she could silently grab from the bedroom floor, and paying cash for a same-day flight to Denver to start over. On the flight, she’s seated with Stephanie, who’s on her way to a news conference. Similar ages and appearance, but Jasmine’s life couldn’t be more different.
Through this novel, I particularly liked the modern and feminine reinventions of elements that worked so well in the classic suspense story The Talented Mr Ripley. Detailed travel plans as either alibi or clues, carefully framing someone else, a lower-class person inhabiting a higher-class life, with careful mimicry of expectations, a clever and ruthless villain you don’t really want to get caught, and more. The Business Trip is in no way a retelling or even particularly inspired-by, of course, but many of the elements resonated. I loved seeing a careful and ruthless Jasmine, setting up whatever she needed to do to get the life she wanted.
Some parts of the story in The Business Trip are laid out carefully — of course Jasmine can hide in a crowd, after that semester of cosmetology school and some smart Goodwill shopping, she can change her appearance enough to blend in well. Of course Trent would be easily manipulated by the hint of sexual interest, we’ve all met a guy who thinks he’s every woman’s dream date and that he just has to ignore her rejections until she says yes. This description grounds the thriller elements into a realistic, (mostly) believable story.
And then some parts are… too clear. Although I liked going through Jasmine’s plans carefully, sometimes it was too detailed. Once we’d seen the text thread from Lucy’s perspective, heard her telling her coworkers about the trap she was setting, seen her set the trap, and seen everyone react to it, I’m not sure if we also needed to see the text thread from Jasmine’s perspective. This slows the pace of a twisty page-turner down to case notes.
Reader do kinda have to just roll with the Diana part of this thriller. The whole hired-doppelganger seems excessively forced, and while I was pleased to see Stephanie alive again, a villain accidentally killing the lookalike while the hero(ine) escapes just felt more like it belonged in a comic book.
It works thematically though, even if the events feel forced. Since Diana / Stephanie / Jasmine all look enough alike to be mistaken for each other, it leads to the questions of when women are actually seen at all. (If this theme stood out for you, Simone St. James’ The Sun-Down Motel and Caitlin Mullen’s Please See Us are two more suspense stories with this thread.)
Overall, I liked The Business Trip a great deal, except for the final resolution. We’ve seen Jasmine being smart and ruthless, so it seemed a bit disappointing that she met her punishment by trusting the person who explicitly said she’d sell out literally anyone to avoid jail time herself. It seemed like Jasmine could have gotten away with it all by choosing literally any other beach town. Some of it was that by this point in the novel, I was in invested in Jasmine. I’ve felt this when I read My Sister, The Serial Killer, The Talented Mr. Ripley series, and other similar suspense stories. Sure, that character’s a murderer and all, but now I’m invested in the story of them outsmarting others! The other part of why that ending didn’t work for me is that so much of this book was about Jasmine being careful, observant and smart, it felt strange that she was suddenly be the opposite. It seemed like an uncharacteristic oversight not to start going by a new “middle name” or getting another fake/stolen ID, especially if she was going to reveal her hideout city. I thought it was intriguing and moving, though, that Jasmine’s dream life was still working as a waitress, just a waitress in a pretty beach town now instead of a waitress with a terrible boyfriend.