I am not one to bandy the term 'unputdownable' around willy-nilly. It's oft used and I have found it to be a misleading term. Sometimes I've found it applied to certain books and discovered that they are in fact extremely putdownable! But this book is - unputdownable!
I am new to the work of Claire Douglas and I see that she is quite prolific. If her other books are anything like this I shall be seeking them out forthwith!
I think that it is complex and detailed plotting that drives this book forward so compulsively. Whereas some books are very much character driven the characters here seem to be at the mercy of the plot and it's labyrinthine whims. They are full of secrets and as unreliable as characters in these type of thrillers are. Often they re hard to like but I always believe that the reader doesn't need to be emotionally invested in them if they are to remain objective about the story as a whole.
And it all begins with a prologue. I love a prologue! It whets your appetite but as you become immersed in the book you can forget about it until something you read triggers it, reminds you and you go, oh yeah! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's have a little blurb.
'Tasha and her older sister Alice might look alike but they couldn't be more different. Tasha's married with two children and still living in her home town near Bristol, while Alice is a high-flying scientist traveling the world with her equally successful husband. But each would trust the other with their life.
So when Tasha and husband, Aaron want a break and Alice offers to stay in their home with the kids, Tasha knows they're in safe hands.
But she couldn't be more wrong.
The call from home is unexpected:Alice and her husband Kyle have been attacked. Alice is in intensive care. Kyle is dead.
Rushing to Alice's bedside, Tasha finds the police trying to piece events together. She can't think why anyone would attack her sister. Then the note arrives, addressed to Tasha.
It was supposed to be you....'
And the problem, I suppose, with reviewing a book like this is that's it is all too easy to give things away. The more complex a plot the bigger the risk that becomes so I've got to be careful! The narrative offers us perspectives from several of the characters and you need to pay attention, also to the time frames.
One of the ways in which a book like this works is to offer clues but also to try and send the reader off into the wrong direction. To do that there has to be a lot going on and there really is here. But the writing is tight and structured so you never get the feeling of floundering in a maze that can so easily happen and frustrate the reader. Here, as the plot develops, it's like the reader is being taken down a narrowing tunnel to a not quite obvious conclusion. In some books it's easy to see where that conclusion is headed and having 'guessed' correctly the reader can feel pretty smug, but that wasn't the case here. The twists were unexpected and not obvious. I would doubt many people were able to surmise the perpetrator accurately. There were suspicions and anyone in possession of some specific scientific knowledge might have been able to do so but I was not that person!!
I found it very entertaining and was able to escape fully - one of those books where you are in such a rush to finish it to find out whodunnit but there's a sense of disappointment when you have finished it!
My thanks to Tandem Collective for a copy of the book.
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