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FIVE BAD DEEDS is by Caz Frear, author of the award-winning Cat Kinsella mystery series, including Barry Award-nominated SWEET LITTLE LIES. The standalone FIVE BAD DEEDS might be a "secrets in suburbia" novel, except it takes place in Thames Lawley, which sounds like a Dickensian law firm but turns out to be an outer-outskirts London commuter village. 'Secrets in Exurbia' it is, then, or, perhaps, it takes a village to raise a secret. Either way, FIVE BAD DEEDS is engrossing: a good read for your Docklands Rail commute into the City.
Frear's anti-heroine is Ellen Walsh, sometime schoolteacher, now an at-will tutor of English and lady of The Meadowhouse, apparently the most sought-after vintage home in their sleepy Thames Valley village. She believed in comprehensive schools - the schools of the working classes, more or less - until she faced the prospect of placing her own daughter in one. Then there are the twins: one well-behaved, one a holy terror, especially according to his primary school. Finally, Ellen's husband Adam Walsh is a moderately successful finance guy, the reason why they must live within commuting distance of the City. He was supposed to "earn gazillions crunching numbers on the corporate hamster wheel, leaving " Ellen "free to inspire young minds (change the world)" but it hasn't exactly worked out that way, not for either of them.
Ellen's quest to "inspire young minds" while making some pocket change entangles her in ways Frears doesn't initally explain with a sullen, Byronic teenager who lives with his violent dad on a council estate, Zane Jackson. When she receives a threatening note, she fears it's from him. However, something more sinister and simpler is going on, something that happens with some frequency in much, much older popular crime fiction.
Another source of concern is Ellen's assortment of neighbors-turned-frenemies, including Gwen and her brother Jason, who, post-separation, moved in with his sister to help her raise her daughter, Bella, and is in law enforcement. Then there is Nush, a "perfect mulberry" (Ellen's description) who has known Adam forever and calls him "Walshy." Ellen worries about her, too. Finally, Ellen's glamorous sister Kirsty is always around, and Frears discloses her past gradually, like a dripping faucet. Kristy and Ellen once shared a life very different from that to which the inhabitants of Thames Lawley are supposed to be accustomes, and it impacts Ellen's increasingly questionable choices in horrifying yet understandable ways.
Ellen is unlikeable yet understandable, and you'll want to know what all five bad deeds are, who sent the note, and why.
§ Rebecca Nesvet is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay and co-edits Reviewing the Evidence.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, June 2023
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