Glitterati Books

Andalucia Life - Glitterati Book Review, November 2008

This 2008 mystery thriller in paperback bears impressive credentials – twelve weeks in the Sunday Times best-seller list (eight of them in the number one position), the most popular of all books ever reviewed by Richard & Judy, and now translated into twenty languages. It is also Glitterati’s Reading Group’s October choice, to be discussed on November 5th.

This book stands a fiction cliché on its head: not the abduction of a child, but the disappearance of the child’s entire family – both parents and her only brother – leaving the 13-year-old Cynthia to grow to adulthood never knowing their fate, and with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

This is a chiller not easy to put aside, once started; much of its attraction lies in the credibility of its setting. The author has set his story in a real town – Milford, Connecticut (no artificial Midsomer, this) – and the dialogue captures the New England idiom quite well, with the occasional expletive to flesh out a character’s credibility.

Narrated by Cynthia’s husband, Terry, the story begins when a TV company reconstructs the 25-year-old disappearance in an attempt to enlist the viewers’ help to solve the enigma. Soon after this the couple’s house-key goes missing and Cynthia becomes convinced that a strange car is following them. Then Terry finds out from Cynthia’s aunt, who brought her up when her parents vanished, about the money – $42,000 - that was sent to her, in instalments, to pay for the girl’s education. But by whom?

Soon after in a shopping mall, Cynthia sees someone resembling her missing brother – and their own daughter, Grace, disappears..... .

If you prefer to be told what the writing is like, I can only suggest it has overtones of some early Francis Durbridge, in that a perfectly law-abiding couple and their daughter become gradually enmeshed in a web of lies, strange happenings, duplicity, and murder with an eventual surprising (but plausible) explanation – and an impressive body count.

There are few of the tricks of “the new fiction” here, but one effective innovation is the use of unattributed telephone transcripts scattered throughout the book, providing clues for the alert reader and tempting the rest of us to cheat by turning to the end! This mystery is certainly a page-turner, but in a different sense – close reading is required, allowing reflection on what has gone before.

Having said that, this is not a difficult read; like so much good fiction its appeal stems greatly from the pared-down simplicity of its style, perhaps reflecting the author’s years as an editor in Canada.

Highly recommended. William Beatty