The Couple Next Door

Through Marco Conti, Lapena participates in thriller genre tropes of unlikeable, morally compromised protagonists. He kidnaps his own baby in a reckless scheme to bail himself out of financial problems and perceives himself as smarter than he really is. For all his confidence in his ability to charm his way through dilemmas, Marco reveals how little he understands about himself over the course of the novel. He is a perfect patsy. Bruce uses him, Cynthia uses him, and Richard uses him. His limited perception of the world, sustained by his pride and the accumulation of wealth, leaves him vulnerable to the trap his father-in-law sets. After all, Marco barely knows the man in the bar who introduces himself as Bruce Neeland. With no verification or even hesitation, Marco allows a stranger to convince to commit a fake kidnapping caper that will devastate his emotionally vulnerable wife and put the child he loves at risk. Marco cannot see beyond losing the financial security of his software development company—which itself borders on a Ponzi scheme. The kidnapping plot reflects less Marco’s savvy business sense and his ability to measure risk and moor reflects his boorish ego, his shallow perceptions of others, and ultimately his sheer ignorance.

When Marco confronts the dark reality that he really has no idea where Cora is and his plan has collapsed, he promises God and the universe at large that if Cora is returned, he will love and respect his family from that point on. This reversal reveals Marco at his most pathetic. What he believes is his moment of emerging heroism marks in fact the nadir of his sorry and shoddy ego: he tries to grift God. Unfeeling as a husband, ineffective as an entrepreneur, predictably ironic as a would-be felon, Marco in the end reveals no evident commitment to authentic character redemption. In the closing pages, he understands only that his pathetic attempt to manipulate the world has ended disastrously in the death of his neighbor and the implication of his wife in a murder.

Cynthia is the embodiment of the classic character from noir detection fiction: the sultry, dangerous femme fatale. Always in control, she is cool and calculating, egocentric and consumed by her own fetching allure. She plays to her husband’s cuckold fetish, allowing him to record her with other men while also engaging in secret affairs. She oozes promiscuity from her provocative dress, to her double entendres. With her “long legs, nipped-in waist, and big breasts, her porcelain skin and tumbling jet-black hair, always dressed to kill” (3), Cynthia is the novel’s femme fatale. Even the phlegmatic Detective Rasbach notices that “she is hot” (116). Lapena aligns her raw sexuality with her feral nature; Cynthia cares more about her own pleasure than anyone else’s.

Cynthia is a calculating liar, a manipulator, the epitome of the nosey neighbor, and a hard-hearted thrill-seeker uncomplicated by compassion or empathy. To Anne struggling with postpartum depression, Cynthia disparages even the idea of children and dismisses them as burdens. She uses the video evidence that would greatly help the investigation as fodder for her own financial gain. She coolly negotiates blackmail with first Marco and then Anne, trying to play them off each other in their most desperate moments. She conducts an affair with Anne’s own stepfather even as she plays Anne’s friendly neighbor. Her death might mark a kind moral accountability, but Anne does not dispatch the feral Cynthia with heroic high-mindedness. Rather Cynthia dies within the cloaking confusion of Anne’s dissociative disorder. If her death lacks a certain tragic dimension, a certain aura of elevation, this is perhaps appropriate for the character least interested in virtue, nobility, or grace.