suspenseful

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Review: The Slipping Place – Joanna Baker

The Slipping Place

The Slipping Place

Joanna Baker

Ventura Press

ISBN: 9781925384581

RRP $29.99

 

Description:

A stunningly compulsive, darkly suspenseful Australian crime novel that asks how far we would go to protect someone we love.

 

Veronica Cruickshank’s youngest child Roland is her idealistic one – a fighter of lost causes, and the one that always needs protecting, particularly from himself.

 

So when she hears he is back in Hobart helping an old school friend, Treen McShane, Veronica tries to track him down – but all she finds are second hand reports, whispers of horrific abuse, stories of a small child being hurt.

 

Then Roland sends Veronica a text message, asking her to go to the Slipping Place, high on Mount Wellington, a picnic spot known only to their family. Here she discovers Treen’s frozen body.

 

Knowing Roland will be suspected of leaving Treen to die, Veronica resolves to find out what really happened. But as long-buried truths slowly surface, she uncovers a secret that brings the violence closer to home than she could have ever imagined…

 

 

My View:

An evocative read that conjures up the illusion of mania, psychosis and paranoia in a disturbing manner that will compel you to keep reading. I willingly followed Baker as she skilfully leads me away from the actual killer and entangles me in a web of deceit and half-truths.

 

The scene that describes the staircase incident is lyrical and gothic – images of floating fabric, the hysteria…no spoilers but this is a very visual scene.

 

A haunting read centering on the many facets, meanings of “family”.

 

PS – love the cover art.

 

 

 

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Post Script: Tell Me You’re Sorry – Kevin O’Brien

Tell Me You’re Sorry

Kevin O’Brien

Kensington Books

Pinnacle

ISBN: 9780786031603

 

Description:

First You’ll Say You’re Sorry

 

A family is wiped out after a burglary gone wrong. An executive accused of embezzling kills himself and his loved ones. A house fire claims the lives of all its inhabitants. Separate incidents with two common threads–a first wife who took her own life, and a secret the victims took to their graves. . .

 

And Then

 

Stephanie Coburn has barely recovered from her sister’s mysterious suicide before her brother-in-law and his new wife are murdered, her face disfigured beyond recognition. Stephanie never met the bride, has never even seen a clear photograph. But she knew her sister, and she knows something is desperately wrong. . .

 

You’ll Say Goodbye

 

The police won’t listen. Her only ally is another victim’s son. Step by step, they’re uncovering a trail of brutal vengeance and a killer who will never relent–and whose forgiveness can only be earned in death. . .

 

My View:

This is a pulse racing 500 odd pages of adventure, mystery, suspense, tension and …just a few murders. There were several places in the narrative that I caught my breath and waited for my pulse to settle before I read on. O’Brien certainly knows how to spin a complex, intriguing and great psychological drama that keeps you on the edge of the chair whilst you carve a swathe through this narrative. You will not want to put this book down!

 

I urge you to sit, read and enjoy this masterful creation of suspense and fear; don’t try and think too much, just read and absorb and let the story take you away…to somewhere where the  atmosphere and the sense of evil and foreboding dominate, where you breathe tight fast breaths and you  forget about the outside world. What a great book to lose yourself in. Indulge your passion for nerve tingling, psychological mystery with this great read