"perfect for Fans Of..."

If there's one thing that really riles me when I find it on the cover of a book, it's a comment such as 'perfect for fans of [insert random name here]'. There are variations such as 'the next Steig Larsson' which appears in the publicity of just about any crime novel published anywhere north of Germany, but 'perfect for fans of...' suggests to me that there will be some kind of similarity between the present work and that of the named celebrity. So I was a little disquieted when I saw the formula on the cover of this one, kindly sent by the publisher, especially as it was attributed to a writer I admire a lot, Sam Mills, who seemingly thinks the novel would be perfect for fans of Sophie Hannah. Now I am a huge fan of Sophie Hannah, and have in fact just received a copy of her latest novel, so you'll be hearing more about her soon. But the thing for which I would say she is most celebrated is her ability to kick off her novels with the most extraordinary and apparently inexplicable scenario, which is then slowly unravelled throughout the rest of the book. And such is not the case with The Woman Before Me.

Now this is not to say there is anything wrong with this novel, which has won the CWA Debut Dagger Award and the Luke Bitmead Novel Award (of which I'd never heard, but never mind that), and has a great many five-star reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. I'm just riding a probably rather pathetic hobby horse here --  it's just that I think it doesn't do a writer any favours if you compare her to someone who she doesn't really resemble. But Ruth Dugdall clearly has done fine anyway, and this, her first novel, has been followed by two more, equally successful.

On her website Ruth says "my books explore the darker areas of himan behavior and how long-held secrets can affect the present". Certainly that is a good description of what happens here. Rose Wilks, an unhappy and rather unattractive woman in her thirties, has served four years of a sentence for murdering a baby who died in a fire when she had been babysitting him. Ruth is up for parole, and being assessed by a young probabtion officer, Cate Austin, who is new to the job. The narrative shifts between Cate's story, present day, and Ruth's 'Black Book' in which she recounts her own past history and the events which have led up to her arrest and imprisonment. A sad story it is indeed, and of course, being the sort of novel this is, there's a twist on the last page which I  wasn't expecting (though I was expecting something). 

So, if this sounds like your sort of book, go for it!