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LASTING DAMAGE
by Sophie Hannah
Hodder & Stoughton, August 2011
438 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 0340980680


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Connie and her husband Kit live near Connie's demanding family in a small town near Cambridge. They dream of moving some day. Connie enjoys looking at a property website on her home computer, and late one night sees a body in a pool of blood in the living room of a house in Cambridge. In shock, she wakes Kit but when he looks the body has gone. The sceptical responses of her family and her ensuing self-doubt almost take Connie to the brink. A troubled detective, her shrink and others all become enmeshed in this extraordinary mystery.

A great strength of this novel is the way in which the author creates tension. She does this in a variety of interesting ways. At times she appears to create two parallel scenarios, one of which puts a character in great danger whilst would-be helpers dither. At other times she creates a clever distraction that deepens even further the character's fear, such as when Connie steps on some broken glass just as she is reeling from her nightmare vision of the body in the pool of blood. Hannah appears to deliberately play to readers' anxieties, building up the stress engendered by the story.

Nothing is straightforward. The story touches on many difficult subjects such as family relationships, breakdowns and obsessions. Much of the writing concentrates on what goes on in the heads of the characters, and so their motives and perceptions become the narrative. At times this feels laboured but surprisingly it makes for compelling reading. It becomes easy to empathise with the characters, knowing their innermost thoughts. By the same means the author taps into deep-seated fears and emotions.

Dialogue is used cleverly to build and reinforce the nature of the characters and throughout the novel the description of the locations is built up to a great extent from the way in which these characters engage with them. No detail is superfluous. The plot is intricate and subtle, and the characters deep and believable. This is a book that will appeal to those who like to work at their crime fiction.

§ Sylvia Maughan is a retired university lecturer, based in Bristol.

Reviewed by Sylvia Maughan, April 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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