Katherine Webb, The Legacy
Erica and Beth Calcott have inherited Storton Manor, a big house in the English countryside, after the death of their grandmother Meredith, provided they decide to live in it. But when they were children, a tragedy occurred in this place where they used to spend long happy summers: their cousin Henry, 11, disappeared and was never seen again. Beth is the more haunted by the disappearance, probably because she is the eldest and was 12 when it happened: as a result she has been depressed for years, and risks losing the custody of her son Eddie. Erica is sure that her sister knows something about what happened that day and is determined to convince Beth to confront the past so that she can finally put it behind…
But it is another mystery that also takes Erica’s interest: while sorting through her grandmother’s stuff, she finds a photograph of Caroline, her great-grandmother, who lived to be more than a hundred and died when she was small. On the photograph, a young Caroline is holding a baby. The photo is dated 1904 and Caroline was not married before 1905. Erica wonders who this baby could be…
The narration switches between the present and the past. The present is a first-person account of the two sisters’s Christmas vacations in Storton Manor, with one trying to recall while the other strives to forget the day in their childhood that changed everything. The past tells, in the third person, the story of Caroline, a young woman from New York who, against her aunt and legal guardian’s wishes, marries a man who raises cattle in Oklahoma Territory. Caroline follows her heart, and finds a life of hardships she was not raised for…
The Legacy is a gripping story of guilt and forgiveness, enduring friendship and family binds, that takes us through the history of pioneer women at the turn of the last century. Although not as good as Kate Morton’s novels, The Legacy should appeal to fans of The Forgotten Garden.
Rating: 4/5
Deborah Crombie, All Shall Be Well
In this second novel featuring Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, Superintendent Kincaid is trying to solve the mystery of the death of a neighbor and friend, Jasmine Dent. Jasmine was terminally ill with cancer, and wanted to die in her own home, but somehow, Duncan finds her death suspicious. First of all, although she has decided to end her sufferings with morphine when she couldn’t handle them anymore, according to her ex-colleague and friend Meg, it seemed that she had changed her mind recently, and found a new appreciation in what was left of a life she had finally decided to live until its natural end. Also, she had set an appointment with her brother Theo for the day after, and Duncan cannot believe that this gentle woman could have played such a gloomy trick on her brother…
Authorized to spend a couple of days digging into his suspicions, Duncan, helped by Gemma, learns what he can about Jasmine’s past, partly by reading the diaries she had written throughout her life, and discovers that he knew almost nothing about this secretive woman, who lived her childhood in India, and then moved to cold England after the death of her father to live with an aunt she despised…
All Shall Be Well is a very interesting story, Deborah Crombie’s characters are well drawn and the two main protagonists, Duncan and Gemma, are likeable, with a relationship hovering between friendship and mutual attraction. I usually like twisted mysteries, with more narrative threads than in this one, but there is a simplicity to Crombie’s novels that I also enjoy, “simplicity” in the sense that the narration focuses on the investigation, and does not digress on other themes, not “simplicity” as in predictability of the outcome. I liked All Shall Be Well better that Crombie’s first novel, A Share In Death, therefore I have a lot of hope for the novels that follow…
Rating: 4/5
Sophie Hannah, A Room Swept White
Fliss Benton, a young TV producer receives a message with 16 numbers arranged in a square. Just after that, her boss Laurie Nattrass tells her that she has been promoted to his own position, on condition she takes on the making of a documentary that was very important to him: a documentary telling how three women, Sarah Jaggart, Helen Yardley and Rachel Hines, have been wrongfully accused of the death of their children or of children they had under their care. First accused and sent to prison, then set free and reckoned innocent, mainly through the hard work of Laurie, who has always been convinced of their innocence.
But Helen Yardley has been found dead, with a card and the same 16 numbers that Fliss received shortly afterwards. DI Proust, who was investigation the deaths of Helen’s two children several years ago, is also convinced of her innocence and wants her killer brought to justice. But Simon Waterhouse, who hates his boss beyond measure, is not ready to take what Proust says at face value. Looking for Helen’s killer might well signify asking the question of the three women’s innocence…
I really like Sophie Hannah’s novels, I think that in the new wave of mystery writers, she is one of the best. But I was disappointed by this novel. I think that what happened to Sophie Hannah is what often happens to authors when they are really passionate about the subjects they are writing about: the thoroughness takes precedence over the plot… Hannah succeeded in presenting the subject from all points of views: the grieving mothers, the suspicious doctors, the well-intentioned social services, and the family members divided between loyalty to the accused carer and justice for the dead babies. Hannah did a lot of research but neglected the plot: it was unnecessarily twisted (and unfortunately not in a “wow! I never saw this coming”-way), trite, almost like out of a bad TV scenario, and ultimately unconvincing… Also the main characters in Hannah’s fiction, Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zeller, are less present in this one. I thought at first that it would make a nice change, but I finally missed them, and there is no evolution to their unusual relationship.
A Room Swept White is not Sophie Hannah’s best effort, despite what some of the critics say. I personally preferred, by far, The Other Half Lives which has been generally unappreciated. Read it or The Point of Rescue instead…