Rating: 5/5
Review:
An excellent psychological thriller
I thought this was a very good book. It is a tense,
well written and disturbing psychological thriller. The book is set in Dublin
beginning in 1980 and is told in the first person by three different
characters: a woman involved in a murder, her over-protected son and the
victim's sister. The voices are very convincing, and the story is
extremely well told.
Although a crime drives the whole plot, it is not a
whodunit. The murder is revealed in the first sentence; the book begins,
"My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved
it. After we had overcome the initial shock, I tried to stop him speaking
of her. I did not allow it..." This gives a flavour of the
style, which is direct and readable while being an authentic, revealing
voice. That word "allow" establishes the character of the
mother brilliantly; she is a selfish, manipulative monster of callousness and
self-deception. I found the psychology
of her character very believable, which is by no means always the case in
novels of this kind.
I also thought the other characters, both the narrative
voices and others, were very well done, as was the sense of place and the
crushingly oppressive moral atmosphere of the time. There is a fine, building sense of tension as
the consequences of the murder play out over years, there are unexpected,
sometimes shocking developments and I was reminded of both Hitchcock and
Patricia Highsmith's Ripley – which is high praise.
This is dark and harrowing in places, but I found it a very
gripping read, with some penetrating insights.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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