Imposter Syndrome: A Novel
“When you're living a lie, you find it best to avoid close attachments, entirely. Other people might see you for what you really are, and that might mean anything period from a beating to a jail sentence to never being seen again. Walking to someone's life with the right energy, a convincing enough smile, you might leave with something. But, if you want to get away with it, you'll be on your own. In the end you're supposed to be.”
Running from a woman, running from his latest con, and running from himself, if Lynch were anymore burnt out, he'd be a pile of cinders.
But playing fast and loose has always been his game even though he wants to be on the straight and narrow. And drastic lifestyle changes aren’t easy and besides he’s broke, homeless, and unsure where he’s going. So, when he runs into Bobby Pierce in the lobby of a Sofitel hotel in London who claims he looks just like her brother who went missing five years ago he's suddenly back in the game—though he's not quite sure what the game is.
But Bobby has big money and a bigger pedigree even though she says that her family is totally messed up. She shows him a picture of Heydon, the missing brother and Lynch sees that they are remarkably similar in looks. Haydon's got the same lapsed swimmer's build, the same brow and jaw. It’s not exactly like looking into a mirror, Lynch’s eyes are blue and Heydon’s green but it’s close, very close. After all, Lynch thinks, “he looks like he stayed awake all the same nights I have.”
Bobbie’s on her way to a rehab center in the U.S. but her flight is delayed and so she scores a bag of coke. Lynch abstains from the coke but not from the mini bottles of liquor in the hotel room Bobbie rents. He wakes up past noon the next day to a wrecked hotel room and a tiny heart-shaped tattoo on his face, just like the one Bobbie gave Heydon five years ago shortly before he disappeared. Bobbie’s on the airplane jetting to rehab. She texts him the codes to get into her parents’ posh London home and safe.
Lynch heads over there, just to look, gets apprehended and offered a hefty sum of money to discover what happened to Heydon and why he signed a promissory note borrowing a ton of money from a dangerous thug the night he vanished.
The offer is made by Heydon’s mother Miranda, who is desperately ill. The offer also includes the best Harley Street physician to remove the tattoo Bobbie left him with.
Nothing is at it seems, including the bag of coke Bobbie bought in front of him. Lynch takes a snort. It’s sugar. Why subterfuge? Why would she pretend to him it was coke? There turn out to be a lot of whys and the story gets more complex the deeper Lynch gets into his investigation.
Who can he trust? What games are they playing? And will Lynch be able to figure it out before anything happens to him?