When Leah was editor of her local paper, two teenage girls went missing. One, Hope, was middle-class and white, from a perfect nuclear family. The other, Tilly, was a black girl from a council estate - and a habitual runaway. Leah made the decision to put Hope on the front page, and she was found the next day. Tilly got a small mention on page 18, and was never seen again.
Sixteen years on Leah still blames herself for the consequences of her decision. And now strange things are happening to her. She finds herself being stalked by an unknown stranger who starts leaving paper dolls for her, cut from the newspapers she used to edit, and lit candles in her house and garden. These are the same candles Leah lights for Tilly in church every year as way of seeking some kind of redemption.
Her husband, son and friend, Bunty, believe the struggle of no longer working and the ongoing guilt over Tilly's murder are making her delusional. They think Leah is making the dolls and lighting the candles herself. Is it all in Leah's head? Or is there a far more real danger lurking nearby...
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The newspapers were stacked up high - matte and musky, folds exact, edges freshly cut. PROLOGUE, 31 JULY 2003
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(@QuercusBooks, 6 August 2020, 384 pages, paperback, copy from @AmazonUK, #AmazonVine)
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At first glance, this thriller didn't offer anything really original. I've read a lot of books with similar themes, crimes from the past returning to haunt the present and a stalker who knows so much lurking in the shadows. Then there's the well-worn plot of a woman being perceived as mad by everyone around her because of mental illness in the past. It took a good chunk of the book to get caught up in the storyline but I started to connect to the characters and what was happening. I liked the flashbacks from sixteen years ago showing Leah's decision and the fall-out as well as events further in the past and flashbacks of the two girls showing the links between them. I liked Leah as a character. She feels guilty for the choice she made not to make Tilly's disappearance front page new, even though she shouldn't. I felt her frustration when her husband less-than-subtly suggests checking her into a psychiatric unit. I was taken by surprise when the stalker is revealed and their motivations. This turned out to be a decent thriller.
