People vary in their definitions of success in life, but one classic vision still resonates with many: an upscale income to finance an upscale suburban home in an upscale neighborhood shared with a desirable spouse and two kids whom you drop off at a desirable school in one of the two Audis you park in the garage. It’s called “having made it” or “living the dream.” At least it’s called that by enough people to keep real estate prices in those upscale neighborhoods frothy. By most definitions the upper middle class consists of about 20% of the population, but in a populous country (such as the US with 332,000,000) that’s a lot of people and a lot of neighborhoods. (I live in one of them even though I don’t check those other boxes and have no desire to do so.) The risk of defining success and self-worth in this manner is that the way of life is fragile. Finances, health, relationship circumstances and other factors can alter radically and quickly. How far might some people go to defend against threats to their lifestyle – or just to their chance of achieving it in the first place? Sometimes the threat can be a simple secret.
Harlan Coben, native of Livingston NJ (very much one of those upscale neighborhoods), writes consistently good page-turning thrillers and mysteries. The Stranger (made into a 2020 Netflix series that I haven’t seen) is a little different from most of his books, but is still intriguing. The central protagonist is Adam Price who checks all of the “having made it” boxes in the upscale (fictional) suburb of Cedarfield NJ; a dad of another player on his son’s high school lacrosse team actually says to him, “We’re living the dream.” His comfortable life is then threatened by a secret – or rather by the revelation of one. A stranger walks up to him at a bar and tells him his wife Corrine had faked a pregnancy and miscarriage; he tells exactly what old credit card charges to check online that will verify the story. The stranger then raises with him the question of paternity since one big lie makes another more plausible. Adam is not alone in hearing life-upturning secrets from the stranger. One woman gets the news that her college daughter is an escort. Others hear secrets ranging from sexual indiscretions to financial improprieties. It seems that a few young computer-savvy entrepreneurs (including the stranger) are using the resources of modern tech to discover dark secrets and make money from them. This proves more dangerous than they anticipated.
The yarn is a good one in its own right, but it raises unsettling questions about privacy in the modern world. Everyone has secrets. Some are tame and some are not. Some are not even ours, but secrets we keep on behalf of friends. They might include financial secrets (e.g. hiding a bank account from a spouse), theft, infidelity, deception, romantic desires (even if unpursued), or outright criminal behavior. Sometimes secrets are kept out of a sense of shame, and these can be burdensome to the secret-holders. Even those who shamelessly reject conventional morality and are perfectly comfortable with their secrets may still fear the practical personal, social, employment, or legal consequences if the secrets are revealed. Such fears are often justified.
Yet, as many have learned to their cost, secrets are difficult to keep against a determined investigator in an ever more monitored world. The tools for tracking people have multiplied over the past two decades. The location of cell phones can be tracked by a simple app. EZ Pass registers the times and places of road and bridge tolls. Police cars automatically scan license plates of passing vehicles. Security cameras proliferate. Where were you last April 17th at 10:20 a.m.? It’s very likely this can be determined. Nothing posted or stored online (or even on an individual computer) is ever really secure. Nothing is ever safely deleted – someone may have a copy somewhere. It is entirely possible for a 30-year-old to be suddenly confronted with something stupid he or she posted or emailed in high school. (There are certain advantages to being old enough for one’s teen years to have predated World Wide Web.) Then there is DNA testing, which is not just a forensic tool anymore. DNA test kits that sell for under $100 can be bought at any pharmacy. They come with warnings that the tests may reveal uncomfortable family secrets. About 30% do: not just the obvious paternity question but grandparental surprises, sibling surprises, and even some maternity surprises.
So
secrets aren’t what they used to be. Nowadays, most people keep their secrets
only because they aren't worth anyone else’s bother to dig them out. What if they were? That eventuality didn’t work out well for Adam Price and Corrine. It probably
wouldn’t work out well for us either.
The Pierces – Secret
Good review, sounds like a good book. Although we may be more monitored today, I would trade away the technology for anything. For an geezer like me, remember how things were before computers seems almost akin to the dark ages. That said it's fun to watch older movies before the days of tech and cell phones. They seem so much more quaint and simple.
ReplyDeleteHalf the movie plots of classic films would be ruined if a character only could make a phone call. Actually, mobile phones have been commercially available since 1946, but they were pretty much confined to cars back then since they needed bulky car batteries to power them. Few of us bothered with them until they could fit in a pocket. Not until the 1970s did I personally see a car phone, and I first saw one of those brick-size cellulars in 1989 or so.
DeleteI remember in the old Mannix show of the 70s he had a mobile phone in it. I remember back in the early 90s I guess it was when they first came out and were brick size and they wanted engineers to use one for updates in addition to their regular job of driving the train and taking signals etc., but it was bulky and heavy, and I resisted it all the way.
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