Voyeur

Voyeur (2010) is the third and final novel in author Daniel Judson’s Southampton trilogy of noir detection fiction. Set in the seedier parts of Long Island during the off-season—when there are no tourists—the series uses typical noir tropes and Judson’s own experiences as a student at Southampton College to investigate the darker side of swanky Hamptons neighborhoods. Voyeur follows a former private investigator roped into doing one more job when a former lover goes missing.

The novel’s prologue gives us a glimpse into the protagonist’s former life. A private investigator in 2003 Manhattan, Remer specializes in surveillance, parlaying his background in the Marines into a reasonable business spying on cheating spouses. While out on a case, Remer is in the midst of gathering evidence about an affair when he is ambushed by four clearly professional hitmen. They shock him into unconsciousness with a 25,000-volt stun gun and kidnap him. He awakens tied up in a warehouse, with the goons talking tough about teaching him a lifelong lesson about his chosen field. They beat him up, and then use a soldering iron to brand the word “voyeur” into his chest—a reminder about thinking twice before prying into other people’s lives.

The novel proper opens six years later. Even though he has had the brand removed from his chest with surgery, the now 42-year-old Remer still hasn’t really recovered from the brutal attack and has never been back to New York City. Having abandoned P.I. work, he now lives in Southampton Village where he runs a well-heeled liquor store and does everything he can to avoid getting involved with anyone around him. His only tie now is a casual relationship with Angela Syc, who studies nursing in Manhattan during the week and lives in an apartment above Remer’s on weekends. Aside from having sex, the pair enjoy drinking a hallucinogenic tea that soothes Remer’s anxiety.



Just before Christmas, Kay Barton, a police officer who was once Remer’s lover and now remains his friend, reaches out to get his help on a missing persons case. Once Remer hears that the missing woman is Mia Ferrara, he reluctantly agrees to help. After his attack, Mia is the only person with whom Remer tried to have a real relationship. The romance ended badly: Mia broke Remer’s heart and stole $80,000 from him.

As Remer investigates the situation, he encounters a world filled with noir tropes. The women are all beautiful and sexually available and the men are all large and muscular. There is a femme fatale who stalks him at every turn, a seemingly all-powerful nemesis whose fingers are in many criminal pies, and a desperate young woman trying unsuccessfully to outrun her problems. Remer is frequently inebriated, often knocked into unconsciousness, and every story he hears about Mia’s situation conflicts with the ones he has already been told. Almost everything he experiences is a setup of some kind or another.

Remer meets with the client, Mia’s extremely rich mother, Evelyn, who initially reported her daughter missing. Expecting a distraught parent, Remer is surprised to find that Evelyn is terrified for her own life instead. She claims that Mia has staged this disappearance to have an alibi for her real plan—murdering Evelyn. Evelyn claims that ever since she cut Mia off from her allowance—disappointed in her daughter’s fast lifestyle—Mia has been out for blood.



From here, he tries to retrace Mia’s steps. This takes him to Pintauro’s, a bar where Mia was working when she disappeared. There, he learns that after stealing the cash register receipts, Mia and her boyfriend, Dave Brazier vanished. However, the more questions he asks, the more he annoys bartender Casey Collins, a former boxer who eventually clocks him in the head. Still, he eventually manages to get close to enough to almost rescue Mia—but he is slightly too late, and she winds up dead.

The pieces Remer puts together are disturbing and point to several plausible scenarios. The Ferrara family is deeply dysfunctional, full of mental illness and childhood abuse that has distorted relationships. At the same time, their money has attracted the attention of a series of nefarious people out to steal millions. It is possible that Mia has indeed orchestrated the whole thing, faking her death to get back at her mother, and maybe even to frame Remer at the same time. It is also equally possible that Mia’s mother has nothing to do with the case, which instead is an elaborate insurance fraud. Or, there is the third scenario—that Evelyn is the one pulling the strings, trying to deal with her daughter for a series of perceived slights.

It turns out that this is indeed what is going on. Caught up in a series of escalating delusions about her victimhood because of her narcissistic personality disorder, Evelyn is responsible for everything that has gone wrong in Mia’s life. She hired everyone around Mia to build an elaborate net to catch and eventually strangle her daughter—figuratively and literally. Remer eventually untangles the puzzle, but it is a Pyrrhic victory since it will never bring Mia back.



The novel ends with Remer putting aside his private investigating once and for all and returning to his old liquor store routine.