Rating: 5/5
Review:
A great read
I thought Remain Silent was excellent. It is readable, has genuine
content and quite brilliant characterisation.
This is the third
Manon Bradshaw novel. I’ve not (yet) read the previous two but it
works fine as a stand-alone. Manon is a Detective Inspector in the
Cambridgeshire Constabulary, this time investigating the death of a
migrant worker from Lithuania. The plot is nicely structured and I
found it refreshingly free of implausible action, but it moves along
well and hangs together – two things which are by no means
universally true of police procedurals. Susie Steiner also gives a
fine, nuanced (and sometimes horrifying) view of migrant labour in
East Anglia and of the reaction from local residents.
What makes this
special, though is Steiner’s portraits of her central characters,
most notably Manon herself. She is a wholly believable middle-aged
woman coping with a family, her career and the irritations and
difficulties of life. She seems so utterly human in her responses
and her internal monologue, which seems to me to be the voice of a
real, likeable, flawed person rather than just a novelist’s
Character Study or yet another detective given a Complex Personal
Life for Interesting Background. She is also very funny at times and
exceptionally wise about marriage and relationships. I love the way
she flip-flops between loving her partner and family desperately and
thinking it’s all an oppressive, stultifying mistake – sometimes
both at once. I have been half in love with easful Manon.
I’d not read any
Susie Steiner before and this was a delightful discovery for me. I
shall certainly be reading the others in the series and I can
recommend this very warmly indeed.
(My thanks to
HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley.)
No comments:
Post a Comment