“Families can be murder”
- Book: The Daughter
- Location: London
- Author: Liz Webb
Yep! This was just what the ‘book doctor’ ordered. A thumping good psychological thriller, which I whizzed through in a couple of days. A relatively small cast of characters and physical footprint, and a suspect list which had just about everyone’s name on it at one time or another! The plot is really quite straightforward, however the outcome and the getting there, were a whole different ballgame and I really did need my wits about me to keep up with main protagonist Hannah’s, often rambling train of thought.
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Thirty-seven year old Hannah, has returned to her childhood home, ostensibly to care for her dementia and terminal cancer sufferer father Philip, who lives alone and has been hospitalised following a bad fall inside the house. However Hannah, who although she is genuinely concerned for her father’s welfare, also has other more selfish motives for packing up her life in Brighton and moving back to her old childhood stamping ground, although it was still not an easy decision. Her mother, Jennifer died in the woods behind the house, when she was only fourteen and her older brother Reece eighteen and on the eve of going off to university. Jennifer’s death was at first treated as suicide, but later Philip was, for a short period, under investigation and suspected of her murder. Although nothing was ever proved conclusively, the family was left fractured and Philip a broken man. Reece AKA Ryan, is now a successful actor and has been estranged from his family since the fateful night of his mother’s death, which had left a teenaged Hannah feeling alone and abandoned, although her father had done his very best to cope with his daughter’s emotional and physical needs.
Now, Hannah needs her father to answer a question which has plagued her every waking hour since that life-changing night. However Philip’s mind is so far disconnected from reality, that to know whether his memories of what really happened are reliable or accurate is almost impossible. In some of his more lucid moments though, Hannah begins to get the idea that not everything about her mother’s death and indeed her rather unconventional life, was quite as straightforward as she had thought, so when Philip is brought home to end his days and strange things begin to happen around the house, she decides that discovering the ultimate truth of those long ago events, which seem to be casting a long and very present shadow over her final few hours with Philip, is more important to her than she had ever believed possible.
She elicits the help of the original detective who was assigned to investigate her mother’s death, even though Chris has since been invalided out of the police force. The suspects begin to line up in Hannah’s very fractured mind, beginning with Reece, who is less than pleased to have been contacted by his errant sister. The net widens to include the next door neighbours and their son, who were like a second family to Hannah and Reece when they were growing up, with the two sets of parents ostensibly being firm and lasting friends. A wider sweep encompasses the photographer for whom Jennifer worked and who is still trading.
Hannah has no idea of the hornets nest she will be stirring up when she begins asking questions and her emotions are set to take another huge battering when she discovers that her mother was not the plaster saint she had built her up to be, when just about everything around Jennifer’s life was a lie, even though Hannah and Reece appear to have such differing memories of the same events. As Hannah’s life and grip on reality tumbles further and further out of control, her father’s subsequent death, even though it is upsetting, somehow polarises her thoughts and inner reserves of strength, making her even more determined that closure for herself and the clearing of her parents’ reputations, is her number one focus. However, she does woefully underestimate the vile hatred and loathing of her nemesis, and as she has her eyes set firmly on completely the wrong people, she almost loses her own life in calling them to account and bringing about personal retribution and justice.
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This well structured, multi-layered, gripping and intense storyline, wasn’t going to rock the world in the ‘action packed’ stakes, however the pace was steady enough to keep me guessing right until the end and the cloying air of suspicion with which Hannah cloaked everyone on her suspect list, made for an oppressively tense atmosphere. When writing, how author Liz Webb managed to keep a track of who was doing what to whom, how, where, why and when, was a complete mystery to me, as my poor little brain was constantly fuddled and tied up in knots. The lies, duplicity, double standards, and all those dirty little secrets, were so widespread and attributed to so many different individuals, all with their own agendas, that melding them together into such a highly textured and cohesive storyline, was wickedly clever, slick and polished, and pulled off to perfection. The physical footprint of the story was quite small, however the fluently written narrative and dialogue was crisp and visually descriptive, affording a real sense of time and place. The twists and double twists in the storyline just kept coming, right until the final scene and I simply couldn’t avoid being tripped up by the many red herrings spread along the way to put me off the scent. Whilst my own suspect list did include one more name than Hannah’s own, which really was an important factor when it came to the endgame, I couldn’t conclusively have pointed the finger of accusation at any one individual until that time.
Liz also did a great job of exploring and examining family relationships and the emotional impact certain traumatic events, experienced and witnessed in childhood, can continue to have in adult years, without anyone really realising. In Hannah this hidden damage manifests itself openly and overtly and it is easy to observe the fragility and frailty of her troubled mind. However Reece plays his cards much closer to his chest, which can make him appear cold, calculating and very difficult to connect with. Altogether, a well defined cast of characters, some of whom were more fully developed than others, none of whom were particularly compelling, but all of whom played their parts to perfection.
I would never have pegged this book as a debut novel and I look forward to following Liz Webb’s writing, hoping she already has another gripping storyline in the pipeline!
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