Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, 2011
438p
It’s 1.15 a.m. Connie Bowskill should be asleep. Instead, she’s logging on to a property website in search of a particular house: 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge. She knows it’s for sale; she saw the estate agent’s board in the front garden less than six hours ago.
Soon Connie is clicking on the ‘Virtual Tour’ button, keen to see the inside of 11 Bentley Grove and put her mind at rest once and for all. She finds herself looking at a scene from a nightmare: in the living room, in the middle of the carpet, there’s a woman lying face down in a huge pool of blood. In shock, Connie wakes her husband Kit. But when Kit sits down at the computer to take a look, he sees no dead body, only a pristine beige carpet in a perfectly ordinary room .
What a pageturner!
From the opening line my brain went into overdrive as I fruitlessly attempted to figure out what was going on and wanting to know led to an early hours of the morning lights out. The suspense keeps building through numerous twists and unexpected surprises and the obvious instability of Connie makes it hard to form any conclusions based on her narration. Easing the tension and providing comic relief are the dysfunctional family dynamics between Connie , Kit, and her parents and sister's family - very amusing.
Familiar to readers of Sophie Hannah's previous books will be the members of the Police Force whose lives and relationships form part of the background to the central story.
I was disappointed in the last book of this series, A Room Swept White, so wonderful to find Sophie Hannah back in top form with Lasting Damage.
Great reading!
I have only read Wrong Mother and didn't enjoy it but this one definitely intrigues me.
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