Just read this, don't read the book

Note: this is a sort of rant about a book, it isn't a summary so the whole story might not be clear. If you plan to read the book, what follows will certainly contain spoilers.

I do not recommend A Stain on the Silence. (see previous post) Not only is the skipping between the present and the past extremely frustrating, the ending is really lame (and to me, meaningless)

This is the synopsis on the back cover:

You can run from a guilty conscience, but you can't hide...James wasn't much more than a child when he had an affair with Lily. And now, twenty-four years later, Lily confesses to James that their affair led to a daughter, Kate. And Kate desperately needs her father's help: she's wanted for murder. But there is no room for murder in James' life. He has a wife, a good job, a nice house in the country...As Kate comes crashing into his world, so she lights the fuse under his ordered life. Because James has also been keeping a secret - a very dark and deadly one...

It sounded pretty interesting to me...but the problem is that there was no murder, and Kate isn't really wanted for murder. And you don't find that out until more than halfway through the book.

The story starts with James getting contacted by Lily, who tells him about Kate and how she needs his help. Then James meets Kate and Kate tells him she really needs his help, bla bla bla... But when James helps her, she disappears without telling him where she's going. So he has to go looking for her. (this actually happens a few times) And he can't even tell his wife, for some reason we don't know (and that we think might be about the "secret" mentioned in the synopsis) So his wife thinks he's cheating on her with Kate and leaves him. And somehow he can't even tell her that Kate is his daughter, until halfway through the book.

All this time, the book alternates between the past and the present, while we wonder why James is so stupid, not telling his wife (whom he obviously cares about) the truth, and running around trying to help Kate, who doesn't seem to really want his help anyway. (she keeps running away, remember?)

So bam! At the end we finally find out that what James was trying to hide was a car accident, where he was driving on his own before getting his license, and he hit his ex-best friend's sister. But Lily said that she was driving to protect him. Somehow the sister disappeared after the accident and no one knew what had happened to her. (seems that she managed to get away from the accident scene, but died somewhere else. And James wasn't sure whether he had really hit her because he was injured in the accident) So the book ends with the ex-best friend trying to kill James, and Kate stabs him to save James. Or so she says. There's a question of an inheritance, so it might have been that she wanted him dead. The book simply ends there, abruptly.

In the end, the book is basically about finding out why James is acting so queerly (or so secretively) And I find the reason really inadequate. The only character I kinda like in the whole book is Nicky, James' wife who doesn't know anything about his past. Everyone from is past (including Kate) seems crazy in some way.