Book Review: When I’m Dead by Hannah Morrissey
By Doreen Sheridan
November 30, 2023
Living in Black Harbor, Wisconsin’s most dangerous city, would be challenging enough for any family. But when you’re a medical examiner like Rowan Winthorp, and your husband Axel is a police detective, danger and death are a constant, no matter how hard you try to balance family life against them.
So neither Rowan nor Axel is entirely surprised to get a call that takes them out of their only daughter Chloe’s opening night high school performance of Beetlejuice: The Musical. When Rowan metaphorically draws the short straw and has to break the news to Chloe during intermission, the fifteen year-old is understandably crushed by this latest in a long line of disappointments:
Rowan suddenly remembered the roses. The cellophane crinkled as she handed them to Chloe. They seemed a cheap consolation now. “These are for you. We love you so much, Chloe. You’re killing it, you really are. But work–”
“Do you?”
Rowan paused. She felt her brows knit. “What?”
Chloe sighed. Her pointed bangs made everything about her look barbed, scary. And then she uttered seven little words that cut Rowan to the bone. You’ll love me more when I’m dead.
As a professional, Rowan tries to set her guilt aside, even as she’s examining the brutal murder scene she’s been called away to. It’s an awful surprise to learn that the victim is her daughter’s best friend Madison Caldwell, who was likely attacked and strangled while walking to school to watch the evening’s production. Even worse, someone has knocked out her teeth, scattering them on the ground around her corpse.
Rowan has no idea how to break the news to her daughter, but a different sort of emotion soon overtakes her when she gets home and realizes that Chloe isn’t there. A series of miscommunications meant that Chloe did not have an adult chaperone home. Rowan’s worst fears are soon realized when no one can say where Chloe might have disappeared to. When another of Chloe’s classmates is found dead, Rowan has to confront the terrible likelihood that her daughter might have been killed, too.
Axel, on the other hand, has a worse fear. Is it just his desire for Chloe to still be alive that convinces him that she is not a victim, but might actually be a willing participant in all this? Regardless, the Winthorps will do everything possible to bring their daughter home, even if their marriage itself shatters in the process.
When I’m Dead is a book that isn’t afraid to tackle human weaknesses. So many children of couples who both work in law enforcement are portrayed as chipper and resilient, usually because it’s easier to not introduce that complicating sort of parent-child conflict when trying to wrap up fictional plotlines. Chloe, however, is understandably messed up by her parents’ devotion to their work, especially when she finds herself at an emotionally vulnerable phase of her own life.
The brooding backdrop of Black Harbor is as compelling as any of the characters in this novel’s pages, too. The polluted, crime-infested city has beaten down both Axel and Rowan, as well as other law enforcement officers like Axel’s chief, Niko Kole:
“Ah, fuck, Rowan, why do we live here?”
“No better place to be if you’re a cop, right?” Rowan repeated a line she used to hear from Axel, whenever he’d come home all electrified after making an arrest or testifying on the stand. Those days are long over. Now, he’s utterly defeated. A husk of the man she married.
“I used to think like that, but now I don’t know,” admitted Kole. “Dead kids everywhere you turn.[“]
I appreciate how each installment of the Black Harbor series concentrates on a different inhabitant of the city, usually one with ties to its beleaguered police force. Each book contributes to a greater picture of a dark place being slowly overwhelmed by conflict and crime, despite the best efforts of the people within it. For all that, this novel is not without hope, as Rowan and Axel’s ordeal serves to focus their priorities on the one person who should have had their attention all along. Enjoying the twists and turns along the way is only icing on the reader’s metaphorical cake.