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Serena Flanagan's marriage is in trouble. Ever since a criminal threatened her family, she's had trouble connecting with her children. Her spouse thinks she should quit her job, but she can't imagine not being a police officer. She's beginning to think she's an intruder, just like the man who invaded their home, when she's called to the scene of a suicide.
Harry Garrick, a wealthy man who lost his legs in an accident, has apparently taken an overdose. It's not all that surprising. He would have had a long road to recovery, and the pain had been excruciating. There's every likelihood that he chose to end his life, except for one small detail: Serena notices the family photos he's arranged beside him are facing the wrong way.
The reader knows that Serena's instinct is on target. Harry's widow is a young and attractive woman who appreciates her husband's wealth but isn't keen on caring for a legless invalid for the rest of his life. She has enlisted the help of Reverend McKay, a pastor who lost his wife and then his faith–and now, his way.
In his second novel featuring Belfast DCI Serena Flanagan, Neville puts readers into a dark, claustrophobic place where one woman schemes relentlessly to have the life she wants and another feels her family slipping away, desperately yearning to hold it together but unable to stop asking questions that will bring her nothing but trouble. This intense, psychologically acute novel has a fairly simple plot but an enormously complex protagonist whose conflicting impulses provide the energy for a compelling novel of suspense and makes the reader wonder what exactly separates our driven heroine from the calculating killer she's hunting.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, September 2016
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