This troubling behaviour, particularly Callie’s conversations with non-existent people, is all too familiar. When her younger daughter, Annie, overdoses on pills, Rob suspects Callie. And everyone knows children who kill animals sometimes move up the scale when they become adults. Her eldest daughter, Callie, has been collecting animal bones and she has a strong suspicion the creatures did not die peaceful deaths. But infidelity is the least of Rob’s problems. Rob suspects her husband, Irving, is having an affair with Hannah, the neighbour who is Rob’s only friend. If you remember the jaw-dropper Ward casually delivered in her crime debut, The Last House on Needless Street, then you’re in for another round of subterfuge. There’s an unfaithful and controlling husband, an abused wife and a daughter who talks to imaginary friends and collects the bones of small dead animals… What seems like a domestic thriller at first turns out to be something with a more terrifying flavour. In a perfect suburban California setting lives a couple with two lovely young daughters, but of course things are not as they seem once you look beneath the deceptively tranquil surface. At first glance, Catriona Ward’s new novel ticks all the boxes for standard domestic noir, but it has more to it than that.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |