Julie Parsons, Mary, Mary
When 20-year-old Mary Mitchell disappears, Margaret, her mother, harasses the police with phone calls, but is not taken seriously. But when Mary’s body is found, with proof that she has been raped and battered, inspector McLoughlin feels guilty, and is ready to help Margaret, to whom he also feels attracted.
But Margaret seems to have lost confidence in the police, to the point that she hides things from them: strange phone calls, and disturbing photos she gets in the mail. A psychiatrist, Margaret knows a lot about psychopaths and she wants for the one who killed her daughter to pay…
Despite the good reviews and the fact that Julie Parsons has been compared to Ruth Rendell or Minette Walters, and despite my own efforts to enjoy it, I found this novel extremely tedious and disappointing. The comparison to Rendell is particularly unfair, since Rendell’s writing style is flawless, simple and effective, straight to the point, whereas Julie Parsons’s long-winded sentences are really counterproductive in terms of suspense and atmosphere. I also disliked her way of constantly inserting flashbacks at odd moments, without warning, making an already uninteresting plot even harder to follow. The whole story was slow going and unengaging, as were the characters.
I went though with the reading for two (bad) reasons: the first is that originally, I had bought I Saw You, by the same author, and when I realized that it was a sequel, I looked for Mary, Mary, to read it first. So that I now “have to” read the sequel to a book I did not like, which I might attempt since Mary, Mary is the author’s first novel and maybe with more experience Parsons improved her style… The second reason is that the reviews promised twist and turns during the course of the novel, and although there are some, it did nothing at all to raise my enthusiasm or interest…
Rating: 2/5
Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know
In 1975, two girls from Baltimore, Sunny and Heather Bethany, went to the mall on a Saturday afternoon and both disappeared. Despite the resources used to find them, no trace has ever been found, except an empty purse in the parking lot. Thirty years later, a woman is involved in a car accident and flees the scene. When the police pulls her over, she claims to be Heather Bethany.
Although she seems to know a lot about who she claims to be, people are suspicious. A lot of information about the never-solved case is available on the web, and something about the person claiming to be Heather is off. There is also the fact that she refuses to say what happened to her during all these years. But even if the woman is not Heather, chances are she knows what happened to the Bethany sisters. When Heather’s mother, who was believed dead because she has disappeared from sight, is located in Mexico, Heather, or the woman trying to pass for her, knows that the moment of truth is near…
What the Dead Know is a very suspenseful story, shifting between past and present, seen through the points of view of several characters: Heather, her parents, Detective Infante, in charge of the case, Kay, the social worker at the hospital were Heather is taken after the accident, Willoughby, the retired detective who spent his career obsessing about the Bethany girls’ whereabouts, etc. The characters are complex and the multi-layered plot keeps the reader interested, but the strongest point of this very good thriller is certainly its ending. As a reader of many mysteries and thrillers, I know how hard it is to achieve a satisfying conclusion and how many novels, otherwise entertaining, fail to provide a worthy ending. What the Dead Know is not one of them…
Very highly recommended thriller, ranking amongst the best, in my opinion…
Rating: 4,5/5
Diane Chamberlain, The Lost Daughter
Eve Elliott is the mother of two grown-up children, Corinne and Dru. Corinne, pregnant and battling a lot of anxieties and phobias, is estranged from her mother. She accuses Eve of being the cause of her fears, because of her smothering love… But Eve Elliott had a reason for protecting her eldest daughter the way she did: a secret she has been hiding all those years, something terrible she has done one day, with far-reaching consequences…
Back then, Eve was called Cee-Cee Wilkes. Her mother had died of cancer when she was twelve, and at 16, she was working in a diner, near the students campus, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in order to earn money for college. There she met Tim Gleason, and her life changed forever: because of her love for him, she took a very wrong and foolish decision…
The Lost Daughter a very suspenseful story and a real page-turner. From the beginning on, the reader is drawn into Cee-Cee’s story and wants to know how everything is going to turn out. Many people compare Diane Chamberlain to Jody Picoult, and it is true that both authors address controversial issues and like to explore different point of views. The Lost Daughter is certainly not a masterpiece of literature, it is a light read (though a big book) but also a very captivating and unputdownable novel. I will be looking for more novels by this author when I am in the mood for light entertainment…
Recommended for reading this summer on the beach…