Post by kahlan on Feb 26, 2017 14:40:10 GMT
I reviewed this as part of the Amazon Vine program and gave it 5 stars.
A superbly written book, this story hooked me in right from the start. It leaps right into the action - two children have gone missing, presumed dead, and their young divorced mother is the most logical culprit. It is clear that the police have decided she is guilty from the start and are out not so much to find the guilty culprit, but to prove that SHE is the guilty culprit. She doesn't make matters better for herself by acting in a way that instantly condemns her in the eyes of the police and the public, although most of these behaviours can be explained way psychologically. For example, she wears 'too much make-up for a decent woman' (but we later find out she has bad skin from her youth and is also very insecure about people seeing her).
This is not a traditional who-dun-it - we do not follow the investigations of a detective and the piecing together of clues and evidence. Rather this is a story that focuses on people, their motivations, their character and what makes them 'tick'. And this, I believe is the strength of the novel. It does also have a smashing twist in the end.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this novel is the write-up after the end of the story, in which Flint reveals that it is based on a real case that took place in 1965 in Queens, New York, and it is then that you realise this condemnation of a woman as a murderer because of her behaviour and appearance, and not because of evidence, was tragically and horrifically true.
A superbly written book, this story hooked me in right from the start. It leaps right into the action - two children have gone missing, presumed dead, and their young divorced mother is the most logical culprit. It is clear that the police have decided she is guilty from the start and are out not so much to find the guilty culprit, but to prove that SHE is the guilty culprit. She doesn't make matters better for herself by acting in a way that instantly condemns her in the eyes of the police and the public, although most of these behaviours can be explained way psychologically. For example, she wears 'too much make-up for a decent woman' (but we later find out she has bad skin from her youth and is also very insecure about people seeing her).
This is not a traditional who-dun-it - we do not follow the investigations of a detective and the piecing together of clues and evidence. Rather this is a story that focuses on people, their motivations, their character and what makes them 'tick'. And this, I believe is the strength of the novel. It does also have a smashing twist in the end.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this novel is the write-up after the end of the story, in which Flint reveals that it is based on a real case that took place in 1965 in Queens, New York, and it is then that you realise this condemnation of a woman as a murderer because of her behaviour and appearance, and not because of evidence, was tragically and horrifically true.
