9 June 2022.
ISBN: 978-1-80110926-0 (HB)
When I read Lesley Thomson’s first Newhaven-based novel more than two years ago, I couldn’t see any way it could extend into a series. I’m delighted to say I was wrong. Her latest work The Companion is also based in Newhaven, and also features characters and locations I got to know first time around.
One of those characters is D I Toni Kemp. She and her diverse and well-drawn team are tasked with investigating the murder of a father and son on a day out. Then a short time later, when a couple and their young son are also killed during a family outing, the evidence leads to nearby Blacklock House, an imposing mansion, now divided into flats and a prime example of Newhaven’s faded elegance. It’s only a stone’s throw from the scene of the second crime, so it’s the perfect location for a police investigation, at least the fictional kind.
It’s a country house murder for our times. Lesley Thomson’s sure hand with characters is very much in evidence. Not only are the victims and their families vividly portrayed; the residents of the flats are a quirky bunch too. They include louche Timothy Mew, live-in companion to Rex, a retired and formerly distinguished barrister. There’s also Lady Dorothy Erskine, descendant of the house’s original owner; crime researcher Barbara Major; two slightly shady retired doctors; the house’s unpopular treasurer; and wealthy Garry Haslem, whose tongue is acid and income source a mystery. Looking on from the sidelines are hairdresser Martha Merry, who has a connection with one of the victims and is therefore another suspect; and a familiar face, Freddy Power, now a mobile fishmonger in the wake of events in the first book, Toni Kemp’s best friend and an ideal witness.
Newhaven itself, something of a wallflower among the busy Sussex coastal resorts, also comes to life as the perfect background for the convoluted plot: the crumbling buildings in the town itself, and the wooded countryside on the fringes.
What more could any crime
fiction fan want? Provocative characters, most of who have excellent motives
for committing the murders and all of whom make you smile or wince; a location
straight out of Agatha Christie; a mystery that will keep you guessing right to
the end as the clues point in one direction then another, then another; and
even a hint of romance before the end. It all adds up to the best kind of crime
novel. I hope we see more of Toni Kemp and Freddy Power.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick
Lesley Thomson was born in 1958 and brought up in Hammersmith, West London. She went to Holland Park Comprehensive and graduated from Brighton University in 1981 and moved to Sydney, Australia. Returning to London she did several jobs to support writing. Her novel A Kind of Vanishing won The People's Book Prize in 2010. In 2013 her first book in The Detective’s Daughter series was published, featuring Stella Darnell (MD of Clean Slate Cleaning Services) and Jack Harmon, driver on London Underground’s District Line. There are now eight books in the series. The Most recent is The Distant Dead published 13 May 221. Lesley combines writing with teaching creative writing at West Dean College. She lives in Lewes with her partner.
Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fictio
Great review, thanks for sharing your thoughts
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