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A top-notch psychological thriller, this book will leave you reeling, heart a-flutter, shaking your head at the clever and oh-so-neatly-executed twist of a (tidy) ending.
Infused with menace and foreboding, saturating each page with such deadly apprehension (for this reader, deeply reminiscent of reading the best work of Patricia Highsmith) – that I absolutely could not put this book down.
Peppered with “ordinary folk”, fascinating in the very middle-class homogeneity of their lives – this story is narrated for us by Linda Hammet, a forty-three year old woman, deeply unsatisfied with her life, which is centered on, for the most part, her “loud swallower” of a husband, Terry, and Eunice, her bitter and always-critical mother.
“Sometimes I watched him eat, just to remind myself how miserable I was.”
As Linda , “too weighty to be elegant” (in Mother’s words), struggles to accept her world of crosswords, cleaning, marriage and monotony, the sudden discovery of the body of a nineteen-year-old girl sparks terror and panic in her local neighborhood.
Before long there are additional victims, and it is feared a serial killer is at large.
As new characters are introduced and developed, (each of them, we learn, likely hiding something), the neighborhood’s anxiety level surges – the police work moving far too slowly for anyone’s comfort – as secrets that are very close to home begin to unravel.
As the level of tension spirals upward, a burgeoning relationship developing between Linda, Rebecca Finch (the glamorous former occupant of Linda’s new home), and Rebecca’s handsome and perhaps shady, business partner, Jolyon King, proves to be as unsettling for the reader as it is galvanizing to Linda’s vivid imagination.
Smart and oh so seductive, this book delighted me from start to finish.
Highly recommended for fans of psychological fiction, suspense and the skillfully articulated “tiny details” of lives, once cut and forever damaged, now unfolding in their ”quiet, unnoticed edges of the world”.
My stop today on the @randomthingstours #blogtour for #aTidyEnding @joannacannon
