Deborah Yaffe answers “Did anyone else find the ending completely...”

Lisa asked this question about I Know Who You Are:

Did anyone else find the ending completely unbelievable? She didn't recognize her brother? He had cosmetic surgery the day he disappeared? He was having surgery to look like Jack, but also somehow needed breast implants? Nobody is seeing this stalker woman as looking manish??? Am I missing something???

Deborah Yaffe

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[You're not missing anything; the ending is preposterous, even given the suspension-of-disbelief I'm willing to do for a thriller. I too found it ludicrous that Eamonn/Maggie would recover from facial plastic surgery inside of the week or so that the story lasts -- not to mention be well enough on *the same day* the surgery occurred to go spin the police a yarn about how his wife hurt him.

As for the doctor: I don't think it's breast implants Eamonn/Maggie is after: the doctor seems to say that Eamonn/Maggie wants surgery to remove excess breast tissue left behind after he lost weight from the gastric band surgery years earlier.

I was more concerned about the utter ludicrousness of the framing-for-murder plot. Somehow, apparently, Eamonn/Maggie not only steals the real Ben's identity after his suicide, but goes to Scotland, exhumes his corpse, takes it to London, burns it, and buries it in the backyard -- all without a cemetery caretaker or a neighbor, or Aimee herself, noticing anything amiss. This guy must be a ninja. And he goes to the trouble of constructing this whole diabolical plot without noticing that it all hinges on the cops and the coroner not realizing that the corpse supposedly murdered two days ago has actually been dead for two years? He's an odd combination of fiendishly clever and utterly idiotic.

And speaking of utterly idiotic: The film critic Roger Ebert used to refer to "the idiot plot": the plot which depends on the characters behaving in a way that no sane person ever would. His key example was the group of teenagers hunted by the serial killer in a darkened house who say, "Let's split up!" thereby making themselves into easy prey to be picked off one by one. Or this example: a woman who is the target of a mysterious revenge plot, possibly perpetrated by a clearly crazy and abusive person she knew as a child, who decides to go off to a rendezvous with the perp without a) asking the police to do it for her; or even b) telling anyone where she's going. Not. (hide spoiler)]

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Pietavandyke I agree. I was enjoying all the twists and turns of the book until the end. As you say, way beyond belief. Maggie was diagnosed with breast cancer, bu ...more
Aug 02, 2020 06:28PM · flag

PJ Sinclair Beyond ludicrous....just downright stupid and extremely disappointing...worst book I have ever read' ...more
Oct 20, 2020 07:17PM · flag

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I Know Who You Are

by Alice Feeney (Goodreads Author)

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