‘Cut to the Bone’ by Sally Spedding.

Published by lulu.com
18 April 2015.
ISBN: 978-1326187088

Rita Martin’s life is as hard as you can imagine it gets, with three children and a husband whose priorities are more than questionable. When he phones her on an evening she’s made his favourite meal, telling her he’s not coming home, that hard life gets desperate. Forced to move to Scrub End a name as depressing as the place, post doesn’t even get delivered here it’s so rough.

Louis Perelman is a boy with everything … except for a real mum and dad. A privileged young man who befriends Rita’s eldest son Jez. This friendship is as real to Louis as all the deceptions he concocts to get what he wants.

This is where things get chilling. The harrowing depths a dark soul will go to. The love parents have towards their children can lead to polar opposite results. A story so deep and rich you don’t want to put it down … well maybe to catch your breath. A dark psychological chiller.

A recommended read.

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Reviewer: Nicky Cooper Brown

Sally Spedding was born by the sea near Porthcawl in Wales and trained in sculpture in Manchester and at St Martin's, London. My work was detailed, accurate and in demand, but I began to realise words can deliver so much more than any narrative sculpture or painting. Sally’s first crime mystery, Wringland, has a strong historical thread and is set in the bleak fenland around Sutton Bridge. Cloven also invokes the past while in A Night With No Stars, published in January 2005, it's a fourteen year old murder which destabilises the present. Prey Silence, set in SW France, featuring an animal rights activist, was published in July 2006. Come and be Killed, set in the Malvern Hills, came out in January 2007. Her strong familial connections with the Pyrenees, Germany and Holland have provided her with themes of loss and exclusion. The dark side of people, and landscape. The deceptive exterior, the snake in the grass are all themes which recur in her writing. Sally is married to the painter, Jeffrey Spedding.

http://www.sallyspedding.com/

Nicky Cooper Brown came late to this game we call writing. Growing up, up North, she was always praised for her talents with her hands, rather than her mind, she harboured an artistic flair often drawing and painting into the night. It wasn't until she moved south to the Beautiful picturesque New Forest that she took pen to paper so to speak. Now Nicky enjoys writing short stories and articles and has a funny and light hearted style, but when it comes to her novels she displays a darker side and a taste for psychological thrillers.