|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Robin Ballantyne used to be an award-winning documentary film producer who worked for something that closely resembles the BBC. Now she is the single mother of a twin boy and girl, living in South London in a house the estate agent describes as "council house chic," but which is tiny, insubstantial, and horribly decorated. One evening, in the midst of a storm that threatens to bring the house down around her ears, Robin sees a woman fall to her death from the rather nicer house across the road. The woman turns out to be Paula Carmichael, a kind of secular saint of social action, about whom Adam, Robin's ex-lover and father of her children, has been making a film. The first, and obvious, question -- did she jump or was she pushed? The second, asked by the policeman investigating the case, is what, if any, involvement does Robin herself have with Paula's death? Suspicion gathers more thickly around her when it emerges that she features in Paula's diary and, more frighteningly, when Adam is found dead, run over by Robin's car. Detective Finney seems to believe Robin is guilty of the two deaths, but his suspicions are not sufficient to prevent Robin from finding him awfully attractive, in a masterful sort of way. Her situation goes from bad to worse and she seems to be the object of an incomprehensible conspiracy that has launched her former media colleagues at her in full cry. In this first novel, Sampson develops a plot sufficiently gripping to keep the reader interested, but regrettably she succumbs to the temptation to adopt every clichˇ of the romantic thriller -- sexual attraction between policeman and suspect, back roads in darkest Cornwall, femjep, the lot. Nor is she in full stylistic control as the narrative lurches from present tense to past and back again for no particular reason. Robin Ballantyne is set to appear in further novels; what one would like to see in her future appearances is a closer attention to the details of setting -- I would have preferred much less essentially irrelevant discussion of chronic fatigue syndrome and much more of the office politics governing a major broadcasting corporation. Though this novel is seriously flawed, Sampson might well develop into a significant presence if she is able to focus on the essentials of her narrative. A word of warning: this US edition of a UK original has been lightly, if annoyingly, Americanized, which adds to the sense that the events are taking place nowhere in particular.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, August 2005
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
