Changing genres
Susan Lewis is an author who has written in my areas of interest in the past, and those sagas with a moral dimension remain on my shelves rather than finding their way into second-hand bookshops. But I haven’t read one of her books for a while so I thought I’d treat myself to one as a break from all this trying-to-get-inside-the-mind-of psychopaths and the like.
Karen Lomax was 17 when her body was discovered in a derelict railway hut less than half a mile from the site of a recent fun-fair, less than two weeks after her last known visit there. A source of ongoing gossip, she’d been a flirtatious, rather giddy, promiscuous daughter to her law-abiding parents, Eddie and Jess, who owned a wine bar in the old town. But no arrests were ever made.
Twenty years later, a local girl, Sienna Crayce, is picked up for stealing a teddy bear from a local shop. She’s one of a group of teenagers involved in harassing the Pakistani owner of the shop, and she’s totally contrite when she discovers Mr Chaudry is not only the victim of constant racial abuse and vandalism of his property, but also caring for his wife who has cancer. She has learned a hard lesson through the experience, but thanks to the busyness of the police, and her father’s direct plea, she suffers no bigger humiliation than having her DNA and fingerprints taken, and spending a night in a cell.
And that’s it for two decades. It’s then that her DNA records pinpoint a familial match to the semen found in Karen Lomax’s underwear. The Crayce brothers, David and Henry, were part of a close knit group of young people who had congregated at their family farmhouse after a pub crawl on the night Karen vanished. Karen’s parents’ bar was one of their drinking spots on the way. The police go in hard and fast, employing armed officers, closing in on the shooting school owned by Sienna’s father, David Crayce, arresting him for murder and taking him away. They are very aware that after six years as an army officer with special training, he’s a trained killer. Furthermore, since then his work has also involved killing – animals and birds – on his estate. Indeed he is surrounded by lethal weapons in his home, and he has a history of PTSD following his stint in the war zone. They are taking no chances.
But until DNA reports come back from each of them, David’s younger brother, Henry, and his father, Richard, are also in the frame. All of them have clammed up and are only talking to their hotshot lawyer or the police. Why? What are they hiding? And when arrest and charges follow, why are they still not talking? Now everyone’s accounts and alibis are all under the microscope; memories differ. Suspicion is rife. Who can be trusted? It’s a slowly unravelling plot and I for one didn’t guess the ending.
The moral in the tale? Comparing this story with earlier Lewis’ books serves to remind me that changing one’s genre as a writer has consequences. Had I read The Lost Hours first I doubt whether I would ever have discovered the early ones which centre on ethical dilemmas, and which in my personal opinion are much better written and plotted than this one.
Standing on the shoulders of giants Sardinia