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Nancy North has lost everything but her boyfriend after a humiliating psychotic break. Her restaurant has closed, her friends have retreated, and with a reduced income they have had to move into a cheaper flat in a dreary neighborhood, far from the part of London she knows. Her boyfriend is caring and gentle, always worried about a relapse. Though she's taking her medication and seeing a therapist, she misses her old life and feels trapped in the dingy apartment, surrounded by a strange assortment of neighbors, including a couple whose baby never stops crying.
When she feels the walls closing in, she takes a walk to explore the new neighborhood, but something isn't right. She hears the chatter of voices muttering unspecified threats that had become clamorous when she had her breakdown, and by the time she returns to the flat, she's not sure what's real and what is a hallucination. When she returns to the apartment building she runs into one of the residents, a woman who is distraught, warning Nancy about something. Later, when the young woman, Kira Mullen, is found hanged in her depressing flat, the police quickly conclude it was suicide. When Nancy tries to describe the worrying conversation she'd had shortly before the woman died, she's dismissed by the police and her neighbors as, well, that crazy woman.
For much of the book, we're seeing the world through Nancy's eyes, sharing her unsettled thoughts, wondering if she is, in fact, imagining things. Gradually, though, we begin to share her feeling that her reasonable concerns are being dismissed out of hand, and realize her boyfriend's solicitousness is something more sinister. It's not until she's able to talk to Maud O'Connor, a Met detective who doesn't immediately dismiss her concerns and is skeptical of the too-quickly closed investigation into Kira Mullen's death, that she feels someone is on her side.
The pacing is tense and claustrophobic, the mood oppressive and Gothic, and the depiction of suffering from what appears to be a mild form of schizophrenia is both generous and harrowing, especially when Nancy is forcibly committed to a mental hospital that is not a place to get well. All of the characters are well depicted, especially Nancy, a classic unreliable narrator who we gradually begin to realize is far more reliable than anyone around her. Readers will be delighted to see the return of Maud O'Connor, first encountered in HAS ANYONE SEEN CHARLOTTE SALTER? Though in both books, she comes on the scene rather late in the story, she's a fascinating character who could easily carry a series.
§ Barbara Fister is an academic librarian, columnist, and author of the Anni Koskinen mystery series.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, January 2025
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