By rights, given its suspenseful opening and engaging milieu, the debut mystery novel from Toronto-born, New York City–based travel journalist Hilary Davidson should be a slam dunk. Unfortunately, something gets lost in the execution.

Lily Moore is a travel writer. Her younger sister, Claudia, is a drug addict and petty thief, prone to drama and possessed of unsavoury connections. Unable to deal with Claudia any longer, Lily has fled New York, settling in Spain while still paying rent on the apartment her sister now claims as her own. Lily is summoned back when Claudia’s lifeless body is discovered in the apartment’s bathtub.

When she goes to identify her sister’s remains, however, Lily discovers that the corpse isn’t Claudia, but rather a woman who has been living in the apartment and impersonating her sister for months. Who is the imposter? Where is Claudia? And does she have anything to do with what the medical examiners are now calling murder?

From there, the novel should pick up steam. It’s certainly got the right plot elements for it, ranging from Manhattan’s druggy underbelly to a mysterious private clinic, from billionaire hotel impresarios to a Pakistani “importer exporter” with a vengeful temper and his fingers in the drug trade. There’s sibling rivalry, an ongoing investigation, a shattered engagement, and a tentative love story. 

It’s all perfectly serviceable, but the result is flat and uninvolving. One never feels, for example, that Lily is in any great peril, despite the fact that she is attacked a number of times. The mystery itself is convoluted and has some good twists, but it feels oddly perfunctory. The dialogue is fine, but it mostly just moves the plot forward. Most critically, there’s no sense of narrative drive; the characters seem to float listlessly through the story.

The Damage Done isn’t a bad book: it has its moments. But it is something of a disappointment.