A compulsively readable true
crime story about a brother’s research into the mysterious life and death of
his sister who supposedly killed herself in 1974.
With shrewd and
calculating investigative skill, first time author, James Whitfield Thomson
intimately explores the tragic, sudden death of his sister and how her death
impacted the fate of his family and his own life in his spellbinding memoir, A Better Ending.
Thomson’s sister
Eileen, the youngest of three siblings, was 15 months younger than the author.
She was always “bright and bubbly.” However, in 1974, 27-year-old, married and
childless Eileen, shot herself—what was deemed a self-inflicted firearm wound
to her heart. Her husband, Vic, her high school sweetheart--a policeman in San
Bernardino, Calif.--was home at the time of the shooting. Due to the shattering
nature of the family’s catatonic-like grief, and the fact that Vic was a police
officer and his mother was also “the best friend” (of Thomson’s mother, the
family took, as gospel, Vic’s version of events and official police statements
regarding Eileen’s deemed suicide.
Decades later, after
his parents and his only remaining sibling, a brother, had all died, Thomson
felt supernaturally compelled to revisit Eileen’s death. (Thomson, an aspiring
writer, initially set out to fictionalize Eileen’s story. But while digging for
details, he unearthed unsettling discrepancies in the official narrative.
Thomson decided to hire a private detective and chose to write Eileen’s story
from his own personal perspective.
Eileen was rarely
spoken of after her death, as the Thomson family was overwhelmed with sadness and
guilt for not “having saved” her. But Eileen’s presence becomes palpable again when
Thomson and the private investigator
evaluate police and ballistic reports, cull witness testimonies, and interview relatives, friends, and
coworkers of Eileen’s to gain more insight. Over the course of many years,
Thomson unearths harrowing, conflicting details that reveal questionable gaps
in the official story and “choppy, slipshod and misdirected” evidence
collection and police reporting. All of
this calls into question the actual nature of Eileen’s death while raising
suspicions about Vic. Thomson’s labyrinthine quest to find the truth eerily
coalesces in 2005, when he has a sit-down meeting with his now estranged,
thrice-married brother-in-law.
Thomson’s meticulously recreated timeline
perfects an emotionally intensifying chronology that probes a dark,
suspenseful--chillingly sad--story. In the end, the arduous path that Thomson
travels to unravel the mystery of his sister’s life and ineffable death urges
him toward enlightenment, acceptance, and healing.
A Better Ending: A Brother’s Twenty-Year Quest to Uncover the Truth About
His Sister’s Death by James Whitfield Thomson
Avid Reader Press/Simon and Schuster, $28.99 hardcover, 304 pages, 9781668062869
Publishing Date: March
25, 2025
Purchase this title on Bookshop.org
A condensed version
of this review was published on Shelf Awareness (March 28, 2025). Link HERE to read that review.
