‘The School Gates’ by A. A. Chaudhuri

Published by Canelo Hera,
5 June 2025.   
ISBN: 978-1-80436-983-8 (PB)

The premise is intriguing. Any woman who has escorted her child to the school gates for the first time can identify with Chaudhuri’s protagonist – Lola Martinez – an unusually attractive young woman who has moved to a leafy suburb to give Luca, the six-year-old son she adores, the best possible chance in life. Lola feels nervous and apprehensive on accompanying her boy to his first day at school, and with good reason. As she’d expected, she encounters ‘yummy mummies’ – wealthy and confident, well-dressed and apparently happily married – at the school gates of St. Xavier’s Primary who stoke her fears and insecurities, making her feel like an outsider who can never fit in. It doesn’t help that she’s a single mother on a limited income, or that she’s harboring dark secrets. To her surprise, Lola is accepted into one of the most exclusive of the cliques of school mums, but it turns out to be a mixed blessing.

The story is told in alternating timelines in the past and present and through a number of perspectives – through diaries, memories and text messages – with Lola dominating the narrative despite being killed a few pages into the book. The murder doesn’t come as a complete surprise. The reader has already learned from diary entries earlier in the text that Lola took a new name and moved to the new town with her parents to escape a sinister figure in her past who threatens her harm. The parents know nothing about Lola’s secret stalker and can’t really understand the name change. They guess she is concealing something from them but are unwilling to press her for an explanation. Living nearby, they can offer the necessary child support while she works at several part-time jobs: as a receptionist at a clinic and as a freelance copywriter.

Detective Inspector John Banner – a sensible, sympathetic and personable figure – makes his appearance when Lola’s body is discovered. Trying to piece together the events which led to her death, he quickly finds himself drawn into a maelstrom of strong characters: the five women who had accepted Lola into their clique, including Simone, Clarissa, Deirdre, Joy, and Bianca. On questioning Lola’s parents, he quickly realizes that her death was not a random killing. Luca was born out of wedlock, and the parents don’t know the real identity of his father. Interviewing the five women who had befriended Lola, he finds they are also all concealing dark secrets of their own and that some had reason to hate and fear the woman they’d welcomed into their inner circle. Banner understands he must uncover the secrets of Lola’s murky past to solve the crime.

Chaudhuri keeps up a cracking pace as she leads the reader down one twisty path after another. We are treated to glimpses of scenes of tragedy, betrayal and loss that can lurk behind the immaculately maintained gardens and homes of the rich and powerful, revealing, in the process, the motives that can drive an individual, however privileged, to that most extreme of acts: murder. It’s a whirlwind ride.
------
Reviewer:  Wendy Jones Nakanishi/aka Lea O’Harra.

A.A. Chaudhuri is the author of The Scribe and The Abduction, and two psychological thrillers published by Hera, She’s Mine and The Loyal Friend. Alex recently signed with Hera for three more psychological thrillers; The Final Party will be published in May 2023. After gaining a degree in History at UCL, Alex trained as a solicitor and worked for several City law firms before turning to thriller writing. She lives in Surrey with her family.  

https://aachaudhuri.com/  

Lea O’Harra.  An American by birth, did her postgraduate work in Britain – an MA in Lancaster and a doctorate at Edinburgh – and worked full-time for 36 years at a Japanese university. Since retiring in March 2020, she has spent part of each year in Lancaster and part in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island, her second home, with occasional visits to the States to see family and friends. An avid reader of crime fiction since childhood, as a university professor she wrote academic articles on it as a literary genre and then decided to try her hand at composing such stories herself, publishing the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue mystery series’ comprising three murder mysteries set in rural, contemporary Japan. She has also published two standalone crime fiction novels.