You ask too many questions.

Adults said that all the time when you were a child. They called you nosy and they shushed you, claiming that kids should be seen and not heard. Adults say that really often, but what happens if you are the adult? What happens if, as in the new memoir, “A Better Ending” by James Whitfield Thomson, you’re not asking enough?

Though they tussled a lot when they were children, James Whitfield Thomson and his sister, Eileen, were close growing up but like many people, the siblings matured, thrived, and later drifted apart. By the early 1970s, Thomson was married and had moved to Philadelphia. Eileen married and went to California.

Fast forward to the fall of 1974.

Thomson was a father of one by then; he knew that his sister had struggled with infertility, though her marriage seemed solid. He had spoken to Eileen on the phone, but not often, and he hadn’t seen her in four years — a fact he came to regret that fall.

A fact he rued after Eileen killed herself with a gunshot to her chest.

Fast forward nearly thirty years.

Divorced and remarried, Thomson began to understand that he’d always wanted to be a writer. He also knew that he carried a lot of inner anger. His parents were ailing, his elder brother was ill, and these things spurred him to journal for his children, leading him to think about writing a novel about the aftermath of suicide.

That was when he realized there was something about Eileen’s death that he hadn’t completely dealt with. Questions began to surface.

In 2004, his then-brother-in-law’s 1974 story didn’t quite fit. Vic had once claimed he was in another room when Eileen pulled the trigger, that he’d desperately tried to save her life. But did he, really?

More than three decades later, Thomson had to know…

At first blush, “A Better Ending” seems like it might be just another true crime story with a personal tie. There’s a detective here, a couple of quiet insider-helpers, and a mystery that gets deeper and deeper as pages pass.

And there’s a shocker: author James Whitfield Thomson drops occasional bomblets into his narrative, almost as a series of asides — tales of violence, domestic abuse, suicide, gunfire, and anger lurking in just about every corner of his family. Together, those incidents run like an ice-cold river beneath the overall story of his sister’s last weeks, and they feel like a slap each time another one’s revealed — but it’s impossible to look away from them. Also, without being a spoiler, the violence comes so honestly — but so casually — that it makes the too-swift ending of this book feel like several kinds of wrong. See if you’re not left shaken.

“A Better Place” is a bit rough around the edges, but it’s an oh-so-compelling read for true crime fans, lovers of memoirs, and anyone who’s lost a sibling in unresolved ways.

So what are you waiting for? That is the question to ask.

“A Better Ending: A Brother’s Twenty-Year Quest to Uncover the Truth About His Sister’s Death” by James Whitfield Thomson
c.2025, Avid Reader Press
$28.99
304 pages