1 September 2003.
ISBN: 978-0-31231600-6 (HB)
The threats came by email, with no sender and no address. For DI John Bright they are not the first, but they follow the winding up of one of his biggest cases, and the most recent threats have been directed at his girlfriend Jude. His boss suggests two things, warn Jude to put her on her guard, and take a holiday. John Bright favours neither.
Coincidentally, Jude is pressing for them to take a holiday abroad and against his better judgement John agrees. They settle for a driving holiday through France down to Provence.
Having done this trip myself I can say that Maureen O’Brien captures the mood exactly, I was there. The description of their overnight stay at the sleepy town of Neufchatel brought back many memories, except for the presence of Mariela, the rather gorgeous fiancée of Louis, the owner of the Hotel Sanglier, where they have booked to stay the night. She didn’t feature in any of my trips through France, luckily!
After the traditional French breakfast of bread and croissants which only taste right in France, John and Jude set off to visit Chateau-Les-Mines, which they follow with a picnic lunch and an afternoon siesta in the nearby field. Their idyll is shattered by the presence of several gendarme’s who take John in for questioning. But for what? Although Jude can speak some French, she is unable to ascertain exactly what the problem is. The frustration of trying to make oneself understood in a foreign land, and also get one’s head around the chain of command in a foreign police force is brilliantly portrayed.
Eventually the local English teacher is brought in to help with the language difficulty, and Jude finally discovers that John is a suspect in the murder of Mariela. Whilst John is detained, Jude has nowhere to go, the hotel is not an option and so she accepts the hospitality of M Breton, the English teacher. Maureen excels wither description of hospitality in rural France.
Being detained for a crime in a foreign land is pretty terrifying especially in a small rural village, where everyone wants it to be ‘the foreigner’. John Bright really has only one option to find the killer himself.
The mystery was exciting, but running
along reasonably conventional lines, and then it shocked me, but that’s what
thrillers are all about, isn’t it?
-------
Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett
Maureen O'Brien is an accomplished actor and author who has starred on stage in the West End and throughout the country and on television where her roles range from Vicki in Doctor Who to Elektra in the Oresteia. She has twice won the Sony Best Actress award for her work on radio and also has awards for audiobooks of which she continues to record a huge range. In 1987, encouraged by the production of a radio play Going On, she wrote her first novel Close Up on Death, and since then she has combined both careers.
No comments:
Post a Comment