‘Lie of the Land’ by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Published by Salt Publishing,
6 January 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-78463331-8 (PB)

It seems, on the surface, a relatively straightforward story of relationships, jealousy and murder. Jemma and Rory are two colleagues working in an office in the Black Country. They have a fling - or what Jemma seems to have thought of as a fling - despite Rory having a girlfriend. But somehow, within six months, they are buying a house together. From there, incrementally, all hell breaks loose.

Except that is far too simplistic a summary. Yes, it accurately describes the plotline of the book, but no, it gets nowhere the narrative, and how the reader is plunged into a tormented, tormenting world of half-truths and possibilities.

The story is told entirely from Jemma's point of view, as if she is, maybe, relating the events after they have happened. It is an extraordinary stylistic tour-de-force which has the reader enmeshed from the very first page, and drawn uneasily, relentlessly through the shadowy, spiky world of Jemma's mind, and what may have occurred.

A slender, brilliantly original book, best read at one sitting.
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Reviewer: Sarah Williams

Kerry Hadley-Pryce was born in Wordsley, in the West Midlands, in 1960. She worked nights in a Wolverhampton petrol station before becoming a secondary school teacher.  She wrote The Black Country whilst studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School at MMU, for which she gained a distinction and was awarded the Michael Schmidt Prize for outstanding achievement 2013-14. She lives in the Black Country.

Sarah Williams has been a professional writer for most of her adult life. She started writing under the name of Sarah Matthews, publishing translations from the French, as well as children’s information books, school textbooks, and school editions of authors such as Conan Doyle and Mark Twain. Most recently, she turned to crime, and has published How to Write Crime Fiction (Robinson), a second edition of which is due in Spring 2025. There are also two crime novels in the offing.

Follow her on Substack at https://sarahwilliamsauthor.substack.com