Celine by Peter Heller

★★★★☆

Celine Watkins is a 68-year-old private investigator who specializes in helping to reunite families. Gabriela Lamont, a fellow Sarah Lawrence alumna, hires Celine to find out what happened when her father, a National Geographic photographer, mysteriously disappeared twenty years before. The novel delves into Celine’s past as much as it focuses on the present-day investigation into why Paul Lamont vanished from the Wyoming wilderness.

I appreciated how Heller focused on a nontraditional main character full of paradoxes. Celine is as sensitive as she is strong-willed, and she is comfortable moving fast and wielding a pistol despite occasionally needing oxygen for her emphysema. I also enjoyed how the relationship between Celine and her husband, Pete, is portrayed. The two have an enviable ease and mutual admiration for each other.

“Amazing, she thought: the layers of anything. The constituents that reveal themselves when you stop and pay attention.”

Peter Heller, Celine

Heller’s trademark scenic descriptions and references to creativity and fly fishing are present in this work, though not as prevalent as in some of his other works, such as The Painter and The Guide. Like in The Painter, Heller’s reverence for women and the female form comes through again in the book, particularly in his descriptions of images Paul took of his late wife, Amana.

The ebb and flow between Celine’s back story and her investigation was engaging. I also appreciated how a few things were left unresolved at the end – it felt realistic for everything not to be wrapped in a bow.

I’m already looking forward to my next Peter Heller read. His characters are complex, his writing is sharply observant, and his storylines are memorable and somehow still relatable despite not always being plausible.