BOOKMONGER
Riveting thriller takes place on Washington’s coast
BY BARBARA LLOYD McMICHAEL
If you’ve been waiting for a twisting
psychological thriller to read at the beach,
look no further. “The Lost Kings” is made
to order.
This page-turning mystery hopscotches
across time and space as Jeanie King, a
30-something American working as a shop-
girl in Oxford, England, recalls unsettling
fragments of her childhood. – The car crash
that killed her mother. Her veteran dad’s spi-
ral into alcoholism and rage. Her dad’s psy-
chotic new girlfriend. The lonely stretch of
Washington coast where Jeanie and her twin
brother Jamie hung out with another outcast
kid, Maddox.
And, when she was 13 years old, the night
that her father came home with his hands
covered in blood. By the next day, he had dis-
appeared for good – and so had Jamie.
Jeanie was taken in by her aunt and uncle
in California. But without her brother, she
is desolate. She misses Maddox, too, who
THIS PAGE-
TURNING
MYSTERY
HOPSCOTCHES
ACROSS TIME
AND SPACE AS
JEANIE KING, A
30-SOMETHING
AMERICAN, IS
WORKING AS
A SHOPGIRL
IN OXFORD,
ENGLAND.
“The Lost Kings”
is by Tyrell Johnson.
might have been her fi rst crush.
Emotionally untethered, Jeanie’s teen-
age years are rebellious. When she moves to
England for college, which is where her mom
went to school, she never goes back stateside.
But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t looked
back. She is consumed with disturbing mem-
ories, and even meets regularly with a thera-
pist, someone she can sort through her issues
with.
And she has plenty of those: she displays
no ambition, she drinks too much, and in
addition to having an aff air with a married
man, she sleeps around with other men, too.
Above all, she’s still devastated by the loss of
her twin.
She fi gures that’s why she has turned out
the way she is. “I was set on becoming a
passing fi gure in other people’s lives. I wasn’t
a long-term friend, girlfriend, sister, daughter
– I was transient,” reads an excerpt.
But Jeanie is jolted out of this rut when
a fi gure from her past shows up at her door-
step: Maddox. He is a journalist now, and
he’s been pursuing the story of what hap-
pened to Jeanie’s dad. He thinks he has
located him. Jeanie would rather know about
Jamie, but Maddox has no information about
that.
Although Jeanie is reluctant to confront
her dad, he is probably the only one who can
tell her what happened to her brother, and
why she had been left behind.
Maddox persuades her to fl y back to the
United States and meet with her father. “The
Lost Kings” was written by Tyrell Johnson,
originally from Bellingham and now living in
British Columbia. He spins out this story in
terse but telling detail.
His characters engage in sex, violence and
betrayal. They indulge in drugs and alcohol.
But they also meditate on notions of time and
stardust. They tussle with memory and seek
out connection and love.
Johnson dexterously blends these desires
and people into a fl uid narrative. He throws
in a couple of literary sneaker waves that
surge forward unexpected, overwhelming
with their power.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMi-
chael, who writes this weekly column focus-
ing on books, authors and publishers of
the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bar-
baralmcm@gmail.com.
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“The Lost Kings” by
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Anchor Books – 336
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2022 // 15