Oh, Sophie!

Over the course of seven books and seven fiendishly complicated cases investigated by the Spilling police force we have had some ups and downs. There have been more fabulous stories, and even when there have been flaws they have been balanced by good things that have stopped the lows being too low.

Until now. There are good things in The Carrier, but they were weighed down by things that weren’t so good, and things that just didn’t work.

The premise was, as always, far-fetched and brilliant:

When her plane was delayed overnight, successful businesswoman Gaby Struthers stepped in to calm a young woman, an inexperienced traveller, who was distressed by the situation. They shared a hotel room, and as they spoke Gaby realised that Lauren was scared of her. She had no idea why.

And then Lauren began to speak about an innocent man who was going to prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Gaby slowly realised that she was talking about the man she loved and lost.

Tim Breary had left his wife for Gaby, but something had gone horribly wrong between them, and when his wife suffered a devastating stroke he went home.

Now Francine was dead, Tim had confessed to her murder, and Lauren, her carer, insisted that he was innocent.

That was a set-up with potential.

But I struggled from the start, because I couldn’t find anyone to identify with.

Usually I find Sophie Hannah’s heroines intriguing: capable women faced with extraordinary situations, who want to find out, and who may not be entirely reliable. Gaby fitted the mould, but she was a little too cool, a little too capable, and it was a little too obvious that she wasn’t telling all that she knew.

And there was no one else. Everyone involved in the Breary case was holding something back, and worse I didn’t believe in any of them. Not the characters, and definitely not the relationships.

Why did Tim marry, stay with, return to, a ghastly, manipulative woman like Francine? Why did his friends, Kerry and Dan, turn their own lives upside-down to support them? What did Gaby stay in a relationship with Sean, when they didn’t even like each other?

I have no answers. What I do have is a feeling that Sophie Hannah wanted to write about abusive relationships, but if that was the case she compromised that by working those stories into an ineffective crime story.

There were dialogues, interrogations, and letters written to a woman who would never be able to read them, that were psychologically pitch-perfect, and utterly readable, and there were moments when I was intrigued.

But the plot didn’t expand and grow; there weren’t the twists and turns that I had expected. Just one dramatic event near the end of the book, which was effective but a little forced.

And the business of ‘The Carrier’ was a bit of a side-issue. I suspect it was there to  allow the author to thread her love of poetry though the story, and she did it well but it felt like a distraction, something else sitting where the development of the story and the characters should have been.

There were ideas that went undeveloped, there were loose ends, but I held on, in hope, until the very end.

The final resolution to the story was right.

But it made me realise that there was a simpler story, a story of dysfunctional relationships, a story of a particular type of crime, trying to get out of this rather large, rather messy book.

It leaves me wondering of Sophie Hannah is bored with the kind of books she’s writing, and if she wants to write something different. If that is the case, I wish she would. I loved the books she wrote before she turned to crime fiction, and I even can remember being disappointed that she had gone down that route when I first spotted ‘Little Face.’

And look how well moving away from crime fiction – albeit of a very different kind – has served Kate Atkinson!

But whatever Sophie Hannah writes next I’ll give the benefit of the doubt, because while the  ‘The Carrier’ is a disappointing book Sophie Hannah is still an interesting author.

Amber Hewerdine was losing sleep, and it really wasn’t surprising.

Her best friend died in an arson attack, the arsonist had never been identified, and now Amber and her husband, Luke, were bringing up her friend’s two young daughters.

An incident that happened at a family Christmas spent in a holiday cottage was still troubling her. Luke’s sister, her husband and their two young sons disappeared on Christmas day, not returning until the next morning when the refused to give any explanation of what had happened.

And things got worse. When Amber took positive action to deal with her insomnia, visiting a psychotherapist, she found herself under arrest. ‘Kind, cruel, kind of cruel,’ she said. She didn’t know what it meant, where the words came from, they just came into her head.

The impression of those words had been found on a notepad in the room where Katherine Allen had been found, beaten to death with an iron bar. The police had no idea what they meant.

That’s how Sophie Hannah set up another fiendishly complicated mystery.

She gave it a few clever twists, and then she offered up a solution that was entirely credible but pretty unguessable. I realised about two-thirds of the way through the book who the murderer would probably be. And I was right, but I couldn’t put all of the pieces of the puzzle into place until the very end of the book.

I loved watching those pieces fall into place.

There were one or two niggles but they were more than made up for by many, many wonderful things. I’m not mentioning specifics, because they really aren’t things you’d want to know before you read the book.

I loved observing the characters. They weren’t overly likeable, but they were interesting, believable and complex. Real, three-dimensional human beings.

And there was none of the slight feeling of ennui I’ve experienced once or twice with Sophie Hannah’s leading ladies: Amber was definitely a one-off. She was an intelligent woman; she was a professional; she’d clearly worked to build a strong relationship with the daughters she inherited ; she had with strong – and sometimes unconventional – opinions, and she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, though she understood that sometimes it was wiser not to… A great character.

I was enthralled by some wonderful dialogue: between Amber and her two girls, between Amber and the Spilling detectives, between Amber and her usually warm but sometimes spiky sister-in law, Jo.There were times when I could have happily just followed those conversations even if there had been no mystery to be resolved.

The stories of the various members of the Spilling police force evolved nicely, and the mix of their story, Amber’s story and the psychotherapists’ narrative worked very well.

I’m a little tired though of the troubled relationship between Simon and Charlie though, and I think it’s time to call a halt. It’s become a little tiresome, and it so clearly isn’t going to work out.

Otherwise though Sophie Hannah was at the top of her game, and Kind of Cruel was pretty much perfect.

An intriging puzzle and a psychological thriller perfectly balanced.

And all I have left to say is – MORE PLEASE!

Oh Sophie!

Writing about mysteries is always difficult. It is so important that facts are revealed, characters are uncovered, in the right order and at the right pace, and just one stray point could spoil the book for another reader. And that is particularly true for books like yours. They are so gripping as they twist and turn on quite extraordinary ways.

But I think it would be safe for me to explain the scenario, wouldn’t it?

In the early hours of the morning Connie is lying awake. She gets up, heads to her computer, pulls up an estate agent’s website and zooms in on a particular property. A property quite beyond the reach of Connie and her husband.

She studies the pictures carefully. She looks at the virtual tour. And she sees a woman’s body in a pool of blood in the lounge. Connie rushes to fetch her husband, but when he looks at the tour he sees the same lounge with no body, no sign of anything amiss.

He says that she must have imagined what she saw, but Connie is certain that she did nothing of the kind. She believes her eyes.

A very promising scenario,

And a classic Sophie Hannah heroine. A woman who has experienced something extraordinary, something seems quite impossible. A woman who is not believed, but will not give in.

I see a pattern but, to be fair, I must say that all of Sophie Hannah’s heroines are a diverse group of women and their circumstances and the situations they find themselves in are nicely varied.

Of course the detectives of the Culver Valley police force, Sophie Hannah’s serial characters, became involved. When I first started reading this series I wasn’t too taken with them, but they have grown on me. It may be a problem that I read the books out of order, but it look me a while to realise that they formed a series. Certainly the blurbs gave nothing away.

In the early part of the book I felt that a little too much time was spent on their ongoing storylines, but things soon settled down and setting their perceptions and discoveries against Connie’s worked very well.

The story twisted and turned in quite extraordinary ways. Some were “aha” twists, some were “ooh” twists, and some were “what on earth” twists. One – the one about the addresses – stretched credulity a little too far, but clever plotting, interesting characters and excellent writing kept me turning the pages. I was enthralled, and baffled. 

The final twist was very clever and the conclusion dramatic. It had been foreshadowed at the beginning of the book and yet it retained the element of surprise. Very, very clever.

I raced through Lasting Damage and I loved it, but it wasn’t quite perfect.

A little too much felt familiar, and I could draw rather too many comparisons with other books in this series.

Some familiarity is good of course, and Lasting Damage is a very, very good book. But I know that Sophie Hannah can write so well, and I am quite sure that she doesn’t need a safety net, and that if she could change just a little more she could advance from very, very good to excellent.

But, of course, she can write whatever she likes, and whatever she writes I will most definitely read.

I have dark shadows under my eyes, and I blame Sophie Hannah. I’ve stayed up much later than I intended for a few nights now, reading her newest book.

It’s her fifth crime novel, and in some ways it follows the pattern of the previous four by posing a seemingly unsolvable puzzle, but it other ways it is a much more serious,  more thought-provoking, more mature work than the four that came before.

The trouble is though, because it’s a mystery I don’t want to say much more about the plot than is disclosed on the jacket. So what I’ll do instead is introduce you to the main players.

Helen Yardley was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of her two infant sons. She was later released on her appeal, her conviction found to be unsafe. Now she is a figurehead for women is similar circumstances and campaigns for others to be released.

Her husband, Paul Yardley, stood by her, but they lost their daughter. She was taken away by Social Services and new parents were found for her.

Grace and Sebastian Brownlee were thrilled to be able to adopt a little girl. They would never give her up and they certainly never wanted her to find out who her real mother was.

Helen’s release was the result of a campaign by journalist and documentary maker Laurie Nattrass. He’s making a film about Helen and two other women accused of infanticide.

Sarah Jaggard was tried for the murder of a friend’s baby. She was found not guilty, and her husband, Glen, stood by her. They don’t have things easy, but they are facing the future together.

But photographer Angus Hines didn’t stand by his wife. He has his own viewpoint, and he is determined that his voice will be heard.

Ray Hines, like Helen, was convicted of the murder of her own children, and her conviction was set aside too.

What links those three women? Doctor Judith Duffy was an expert witness at all three trials, but now she has been discredited and charged with misconduct. But is it that simple?

Maybe not. Laurie Nattrass has accepted a new job and Fliss Benson finds herself promoted and in charge of the documentary. It’s a job she has good reason to not want. for personal reasons, because Laurie thinks he can still pull the strings, and because Ray Hines is pursuing her. Why?

It’s an interesting cast, and characters are one of Sophie Hannah’s strengths. Every one vivid and utterly believable.

The mystery that links then all is the murder of Helen Yardley. And of course it brings in Sophie Hannah’s series characters, detectives Simon Waterhouse and Charley Zailer, and a new dimension as Detective Inspector Giles Proust who is in charge of the Yardley murder case, was junior officer when Helen Yardley was first arrested and believes completely in her innocence.

The story that is complex, but not difficult to follow, and utterly compelling. Some elements and attitudes are entirely expected, but many are not. So you are always unsettled and always thinking and wondering. There’s so much I’d like to say, so many interesting relationships, developments and ideas, but I can’t. It would spoil it.

And it’s a story that raise a lot more questions. That maybe justice can’t be fully served by deeming people guilty or not guilty. About the seeming need to always have somebody cast as a hero and somebody cast as a villain. About how sometimes things are broken and can’t be fixed, no matter how sorry anyone might be. And gripping though the story is there are moments, and many dialogues, with the power to make you stop and think about things that are really much more important.

But the mystery never loses its hold. There are elements that are a little difficult to believe, but they work because they are psychologically true. Loose ends too, a few things unexplained, but life is like that. The ending has those same strengths and weaknesses. It’s a little melodramatic, but it’s extremely well executed and it does work.

And, though I’m tired, I’m still thinking about this book. I suspect I will be for a good while.