Book Review: The Clinic by Cate Quinn

Meg is used to living life undercover, working as she does catching crooks for a Los Angeles casino. Almost no one there even knows that she’s basically Hollywood royalty, the younger daughter of a famous actress as well as the younger sister of platinum-selling singing star Haley Banks. It helps that Meg is a social chameleon, a skill learned while surviving her nightmare childhood. While Meg wants little to do with her narcissist mother most days, her relationship with her sister is more tempestuous, as the two seem unable to break out of a cycle of fighting and staying estranged for weeks or months before finally reconciling.

They’re in one of these periods of estrangement when Meg hears, via Haley’s insistent texts, that Haley is back in rehab. The last thing Meg wants to do is talk about therapy, so she puts off responding. This is a choice she’ll regret when she inadvertently catches a news story informing her that her big sister is dead, the apparent victim of a suicidal drug overdose while staying at a fancy clinic in the Pacific Northwest.

Meg might be in denial about a lot of things, but she knows one fact with absolute certainty: Haley would never kill herself. With the help of her co-worker Harry, she goes undercover at the clinic, posing as a casino employee who wants to get clean. Of course, Meg has no intention of giving up the alcohol or painkillers that help her get through her days, and soon finds herself stymied by both the treatment program and the lack of solid leads.

Gently, Harry suggests that maybe trying to get clean and face her demons will actually help in her investigation. Being vulnerable towards her fellow patients, most of whom were present when Haley died, would encourage them to confide in her in return. Meg has to admit:

“That’s what my therapist keeps saying. Bond with the group. He wants me to read out this big honest statement saying all the messed-up stuff I’ve done.”

 

“So do it.”

“I don’t know if I can. If I do the honesty statement, the next step is digging up childhood trauma. I’m not ready for that, Harry.”

 

“Haley was remembering childhood stuff in rehab, right?”

 

“Right.”

 

“So maybe you and Haley’s past […] is the key to what the fuck is going on.”

 

“What are you talking about, Harry?”

 

“You’re not going to like this, Meg. But to solve your sister’s murder, you might need to solve yourself.”

The more Meg investigates, the more she has to admit that Harry might actually be right. But as she begins to voluntarily allow the clinic to use its methods on her, orthodox or otherwise, the more alarmed she grows by what she discovers. Given the timing and accessibility required to have harmed her sister, Meg knows that one of her fellow patients must have been Haley’s killer. The more secrets she uncovers about the clinic itself, however, the more she begins to worry that someone else might have malevolent intentions towards them all.

Meg isn’t the only one at the clinic with secrets or concerns. The live-in manager, Cara, is rigid and loyal to her employer, the mysterious Dr. Lutz. While Cara wants to follow his instructions to the letter, the interest of the local police causes her allegiance to waver, especially in the face of the cheerful inquisitiveness of the disarming Officer Meyers, who’s clearly done her research when she brings up Cara’s last job:

[“]They couldn’t fire you. You refused to leave. So they shuffled you into a deadbeat hotel and hoped you’d quit of your own accord.”

 

“Thanks for the summary.” I give her my best icy smile. “Where I come from, people keep their internet stalking to themselves.”

 

“Oh, I come from a big family of oversharers,” Meyers says happily. “I also saw that you turned the hotel around,” she beams, oblivious to my displeasure. “Made friends with the hobos. Started turning a profit. Good for you.[”]

Cara’s efficiency and determination are only two of the reasons she was brought in to run the clinic. But will these exemplary qualities aid or hamper Meg’s quest to uncover the truth about what happened to her sister?

This thriller holds some wild surprises, as Meg finally processes her suppressed memories of the past and gets to the bottom of not only what the clinic is doing, but what really happened to Haley. The depictions of addiction withdrawal and the way the famous patients deal with their traumas are all presented viscerally: it’s hard not to root for all of them, even knowing the terrible things they’ve done and that one of them is definitely a murderer. Cate Quinn draws from her own experiences, and it shows in the empathy and care she uses in writing this fascinating page-turner, that dives deep into family trauma and emotional repression and the ways people learn to cope with their pasts in order to survive.