Book Review: The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan

If you enjoy reading mysteries and you follow national politics with interest, The Busy Body will head your must-read list. It’s a roman à clef. Imagine being a fly on the wall of Hillary Clinton’s home after the 2016 election—the mind boggles. Meet Dorothy Gibson, the most revered and/or vilified woman in the United States, depending on your perspective. She ran as an Independent in the recent (fictional) presidential election and lost. Her loss paved the way for a leader very reminiscent of the 45^th president. To call Gibson polarizing is to vastly underestimate her importance to the national conversation.

The narrator/protagonist of The Busy Body is an anonymous ghostwriter, or, as she prefers, collaborator. She has a good reputation within the genre.

I’ve always been nosy about other people, and I discovered in my late twenties that I have a knack for spinning tales about them, and for making these tales sing.

 

My job is to make the assholes likable. I nip and tuck their excesses, soften their hard edges, polish whatever I and an army of editors/publicists deem unsightly till it sparkles.

A careful reader will note that our unnamed collaborator, musing retrospectively about her most recent assignment, walks away from ghostwriting Dorothy Gibson’s memoir—even though by refusing, “I run the risk of ruining my reputation as a grade A professional bullshit artist.”

Somehow, I managed to get myself wrapped up in an honest-to-goodness murder mystery. And for once?

 

The story’s all mine. It started with a phone call.

 

This wasn’t the way things usually started. My agent Rhonda almost always emails me, knowing I prefer to keep my interactions limited to the written sphere whenever possible.

Our ghostwriter is rather solitary. When Rhonda texts Call me back ASAP she starts to freak out. Her knowledgeable agent quickly texts Good news, not bad.

“It’s Dorothy Gibson.”

 

If my life were a movie trailer, this is where the needle would have scratched the record.

 

Dorothy. Freaking. Gibson.

In the wake of the election, Dorothy Gibson has retreated to her isolated house in rural Maine: she insists the ghostwriter move in. Leila Mansour, Gibson’s personal aide, and “news fixture,” picks her up at Portland International Jetport. Mansour brings Hillary Clinton’s personal aide and “policy wonk” to mind— “She seemed to be wearing no makeup other than a pop of bright red lipstick, though I suspected she was simply good at applying makeup. Her parents had emigrated from Egypt, and though she’d been born and raised in New Jersey, her first language was Arabic.”

The writer’s first impression of Dorothy Gibson is to note how small and compact she is, “neither an inch above 5’3” nor a pound over 115.” It takes willpower for Gibson to be so consistent. And Dorothy Gibson is “an excellent listener,” something that will prove vital in the coming days.

Gibson’s house is home to Leila, 24/7 bodyguards, household staff, as well as frequent visitors like her son Peter. Peter nags his mother to take a break from her intense conversations with her collaborator: “I know this is a crazy idea, but maybe you could for once, y’know, not overdo it?” Fine. Would the ghostwriter like to go into town to Betty’s Liquor Mart with Dorothy and her bodyguard Officer Choi? Sure.

Being a politician means saying goodbye to anonymity, like when a fervid fan interrupts Dorothy’s perusal of Betty’s alcoholic offerings. Her name is Vivian Davis—she tells Dorothy that they’re neighbors: she and her husband are staying at The Crystal Palace near Dorothy’s house. Vivian wants to TALK to Dorothy, express her profound disappointment at the results of the recent election, and share her Kickstarter campaign.

“I thought we could all use a laugh so I did a Kickstarter? You know, the crowdfunding thing?”

 

“Sure, sure,” said Dorothy.

 

“For five bucks I’ll send a video of me yelling at our future President on my TV screen to go—well, you know. Eff himself.”

“Ah. I see,” said Dorothy.

 

How long was this nightmare of a woman going to stay here?

At last, the two women escape, but not before Vivian insists on a selfie. The Busy Body is ripe with obscure bits of Celebrity 101, like when Dorothy takes the phone out of Vivian’s hand, “a trick I knew from previous clients: when a selfie is inevitable, take control of the situation by holding the phone yourself, which makes you seem warm and generous but secretly ensures you take just one photo, at the angle and distance you prefer, and that it happens with zero delay.”

They say that no good deed goes unpunished. A few days later Leila interrupts the conversation that the ghostwriter and Dorothy are having. She holds up her iPad and asks if Dorothy remembers “taking a picture with this woman?” It’s Vivian. So, Dorothy snaps, why is Leila focused on this?

“Oh, nothing big,” said Leila airily. “Just that this woman is dead now.”

 

She took a step back, surveying the wreckage from the bomb she’d just dropped. Dorothy made her eyes big. “Real-ly?”

 

Leila nodded. “Suicide. Husband found her in the bathtub yesterday with an empty bottle of sleeping pills.”

Dorothy Gibson takes nothing at face value. She asks for the medical examiner’s reports and when it’s not immediately forthcoming, she makes some calls. Dorothy knows all about access and clout: they’re power tools and she doesn’t hesitate to use them. Surprise: the examiner’s report states it’s not a suicide but rather a murder. Dorothy is a dog on a scent and her collaborator, an addict of true crime podcasts, is her eager sidekick. You won’t be able to put down The Busy Body once you start reading. Kudos to Kemper Donovan for this surprising, and very much-of-the-moment mystery.