25 January 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-83790-582-9 (PB)
Do you ever watch one of those TV soaps which hurls one disaster after another at a character, and wonder how he or she can possibly survive with health and sanity intact? You may well feel the same when you read Elisabeth Carpenter’s latest psychological thriller.
Carpenter’s protagonist Jessie Donovan’s early life laid the foundation: her father deserted the family, her mother turned to drink, and she and her brother more or less brought themselves up. Then when she was twelve, she found her best friend dead in a meadow – and was charged with her murder, found guilty and sentenced to eight years’ incarceration in a secure unit. Even her mother had her doubts when she protested her innocence, and no one else had ever believed her. She was even accused of other similar murders.
Then she met journalist Sadie Harrison, who not only saw past the apparent evidence of her guilt, but also set about proving that the police, a string of witnesses and the jury were all wrong.
After her release, Jessie worked hard to get her life back on track. Decades later she is a successful artist, happily married with a small daughter, Mia, whom she adores – but just when she thinks she’s safe, her past threatens to come back to bite her. What follows would send the most stable personality into a tailspin, and things get very much worse before there’s a chance of improvement.
What sets Elisabeth Carpenter’s books apart from the average psychological thriller is her characters. Despite an emotionally damaging childhood, then losing the teenage years during which most people find their path in life, Jessie herself is warm, sensible, straightforward and above all loving, though understandably fearful. In contrast, her mother Marie is still careless and selfish to the point of narcissism. Sadie, the journalist, is well organized and tenacious, but reveals a soft centre when she is called to her own mother’s deathbed. The supporting players are equally well portrayed; I especially enjoyed Eddie, Heather’s well-meaning but sometimes clumsy husband, and Mia, a four-year-old wise well beyond her years.
The viewpoint switches between Jessie, Sadie and the murdered friend’s mother Heather, and there’s never any doubt about whose eyes we’re looking through. And as Jessie’s world collapses around her, it’s easy to root for her and become as convinced as Sadie that she is sinned against and not sinning.
Elisabeth
Carpenter has been delving into life’s murkier corners for several years now
and finds a different cranny to explore each time. I for one hope she carries
right on doing it.
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Reviewer:
Lynne Patrick
Elisabeth (Libby) Carpenter lives in Preston with her family. She completed a BA
in English Literature and Language with the Open University in 2008. Elisabeth
was awarded a Northern Writers’ New Fiction award and was longlisted for Yeovil
Literary Prize (2015 and 2016) and the MsLexia Women’s Novel award (2015). She
loves living in the north of England and sets most of her stories in the area,
including the novel she is writing at the moment.
https://elisabethcarpenter.co.uk
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 fiction.
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