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This book was living on borrowed time for most of the hours I spent reading it. Only a wish to find out how the author was going to unknot the mess and lies the characters had woven around them kept me going. So, OK, maybe Sophie Hannah was doing her job, then . . . I don't always have to like a character to stick with them, but I have to feel something for them – and to care to some extent what happens in their lives. But Hannah really pushed her luck with the oddballs and sad gits peopling the pages of HURTING DISTANCE, her second novel. Oddball no. 1 is Naomi Jenkins, who makes sundials and is hopelessly in love with lorry driver Robert Haworth. They've been meeting once a week for a year at a hotel at a motorway service station (classy, or what?) And then he goes AWOL. The police don't seem over-keen to investigate, even though Naomi is convinced he's in danger. So she dredges up a nightmare from her past in a bid to persuade them that he's actually a psychopath and that they should be tracking him down . . . Oddball no. 2 is DS Charlie Zailer, who's investigating the case. She has the requisite dysfunctional love life and sleeps around. Oh, and she has an extremely annoying sister. Oddball no. 3 is Robert's wife Juliet. She doesn't seem in the least worried by his disappearance, but her behaviour is strange, to say the least. Oddball no. 4 is DI Giles Proust. Anyone lurking round this genre for very long gets used to cops with foibles, but really, this one seems so idiotic that you wonder how he got as far as he has. HURTING DISTANCE hots up towards the middle as it all gets very dark and sordid. I'm not totally convinced about the accuracy of some of the police stuff, though, particularly the confrontational and cursory interview with someone claiming they'd been raped. And then suddenly the tension is lost at the end after a particularly scary scene when it all degenerates into monologue. The problem is that none of the characters are well-rounded and convincing. And I could never work out whereabouts in the UK the book was set – one minute it seemed to be Kent, the next Yorkshire, with occasional forays to Scotland – which robbed it of any feeling of place. That might not have mattered if the characterisation had been stronger. There are a load of books hovering on the edges of contemporary literature, psychological suspense and chicklit. HURTING DISTANCE is one of them. And that's not necessarily a good thing.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, June 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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