Little Brown Book Group – nigeladamsbookworm

15 years ago 18 year old Kieran is in a seaside cliff, with his secret girlfriend, when a sudden storm hits the coast of the small town in Tasmania.

She escapes but he’s washed out to sea. His brother and a close friend die trying to rescue him.

Meanwhile a 14 year old girl goes missing and is never seen again

Today the boy Kieran is back in the town visiting, he’s moved out and now lives in Sidney with his wife, a young woman from the town and his daughter.

On their first night a woman’s body is discovered just down the beach. In almost the same spot the 14 year old girl was last seen during the storm

The investigation into the latest death is going to bring back old memories, but are all of them accurate.

The story relies on the Venn Diagram of relationships in a small town.

Everybody knows everybody. Secrets within secrets. Little white lies, all add to the story.

Everybody has a little secret, but those little secrets, and some of the lies that were told in good faith, have a way of hiding facts.

But why would people lie, and have those small ripples, that started years ago, turned into a tsunami wave all these years later.

I would call this a cosy-crime type of story, but the suspense it builds up is anything but cosy.

The central character, Kieran, struggles with the truth that is being unveiled, until even he has to admit the unthinkable.

The truth of the story crept up on me, I don’t actually know when I worked out what had happened, but I do know I got it wrong for a long time before the penny finally dropped.

A great story, a great read, and another new author to add to my must be read list.

Pages: 337. Publisher: Little Brown Books. Available: Now

Death at Whitewater Church Andrea Carter

Set in rural Ireland this story follows Ben (Benedicta) O’Keefe, a Lawyer practicing in the small town of Glendara.

The story starts with Ben and a local Surveyor acting for a local businessman who is selling a disused church for development. Whilst looking around the church they discover a crypt, and inside the crypt a skeletonised body. Not only is the body too recent to be there legitimately but it also appears that whoever it is, was locked in and left to die.

Rumours begin that the body is that of a man who has been missing since the morning of his wedding day.

Missing for nearly seven years is the body that of local man Danny Devitt.

Although O’Keefe has been living in the village nearly as long as Devitt has been missing she is unaware of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.

Glendara is a typical Celtic rural village, family histories interweave, and everybody knows everybody else’s business As the local Lawyer, and member of the local dramatics group, O’Keefe comes into contact with various characters, all of who seem to have an insight into the mystery but nobody has a definitive answer.

To help with identifying the body the local Garda enlist the help of a Forensic Anthropologist, a face from O’Keefe’s past who brings back memories O’Keefe would rather be left forgotten.

O’Keefe deals with the past whilst working on the present day crime in a semi-professional manner.

A series of break-ins in the town may be related to the body in the crypt but how. During her research O’Keefe becomes aware of a terrorist incident in which a ship was sunk just outside the local docks. The sinking of the ship was attributed to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Is this also related to the body in the crypt?

The last few pages reveal the answers, and they’re not easy to anticipate.

This debut novel is a really good read. From start to finish it kept me enthralled.

The story is set at a pace that makes it easy to read but very hard to put down.

The characters are all fascinating without being overpowering.

The description of the settings makes Glendara feel real, yet it is a place made up by the Author Andrea Carter.

Set in the winter the isolation of the area seems more sinister, perfect for the plot.

I can only hope this is the first book of many from Andrea Carter.