#BookReview ‘Suspects’ by Lesley Pearse

About the book…

Welcome to Willow Close, where everyone is a suspect . . .

On the day Nina and Conrad Best move into their new home in picture-perfect Willow Close a body is discovered.

Hurrying inside with their belongings, they see horrified neighbours gather by the police cordon – one of the residents has been attacked and brutally killed in the woods.

Believing someone must have seen the murderer, the police interview all the residents of the Close. They soon find out that each neighbour harbours their own secrets.

The residents of Willow Close are far from what they initially seem and strange, even dark, things happen behind their closed doors.

Nina and Conrad had thought they’d found their dream neighbourhood. But have they moved into a nightmare?

Many thanks to Midas PR who invited me on the blogtour, and publishers Michael Joseph books for the gifted review copy of ‘Suspects’, the latest novel from Lesley Pearse which is published on 24th June.

The very last thing that you would want to see on moving in day, is a crowd of reporters and police cordons, however, Nina and Conrad’s forever home is tainted on arrival by the discovery of Chloe Church’s body.

Before the first neighbour can pop around with a welcome gift, before they invited to the neighbourhood watch group, they hit the ground running trying to work out who lives where and who does what.

The truth in places like Willow Close, is that behind the neat gardens and spaciously arranged homes, the owners live very, very different lives. Not only does Chloe’s death shake the complacent, very white, upper middle class enclave, it acts as a catalyst.

This book is almost painfully white, although it is set in 2009, and follows the investigation, day by day, neighbour by neighbour, I had to keep checking the date as the words being used seemed quite archaic, quaint even, and the odd random sex scene or swearing  thrown in to spice the dialogue up seemed remarkably out of place. It feels like a Midsummer Murder trying to be Prime Suspect.

It leads to a quite disjointed feel, the women are cut-out stereotypes of the ‘tart with a heart’, ‘brazen hussie’ ‘curtain twitcher’ variety, and there were several references to domestic violence which were framed as though it was ‘a woman’s lot’ which I took exception to.

Chloe’s death, a character we didn’t really meet because she is dead before the book starts, is seen as a body picked over by crows-various characters make her death about them, and, whilst the police investigation is ongoing, quite a few residents have reason to not want them poking too closely into their bank accounts and daily comings and goings.

I found it hard to place who was living where, I wanted to know who killed Chloe and the way that the police turned their attention on the local ‘oddball’, Tex, is very realistic after a fashion as anyone outside the norm is the ‘acceptable’ culprit, not anyone who lives in these nice houses.

Nina and Conrad talked like the leads in a 1950’s movie, I am in my 40’s and don’t think my husband and I have ever had a conversation like they have, daily. It read like how a person in an older generation would think younger people would talk, lending the dialogue a stilted effect. There was quite a lot of repetition which became expositional, and when the same words are repeated, I had to keep back tracking to find out if I had missed something or if it was a misprint.

A senseless death, in an enclosed environment, in broad daylight, police who don’t properly search the properties (I didn’t buy this at all, that days after the murder, one resident was ringing the police telling them to check out the broken back fence that an adult could climb through, before he did some DIY,that didn’t ring true to me), it all seemed a little too much. Especially when considering that a child has died, and I am unsure if the author meant to have this stiff upper lip attitude to exemplify the class of residents in Willow Close, but it detracted from the loss of a young girl’s life.

There is a scene which I found so well written, tensions escalate into alcoholic excess and the entire Close come out shouting at each other. The way that the previously well thought of people let their guards down felt authentic, however, with a child being murdered, would these people have gone and had a drunken verbal assault within feet of grieving parents?

I liked the way that it was paced, I wanted Chloe to rest in peace and her murderer caught, but the residents-with the exception of Janice, personally I felt this gentleman’s companion was the most accessible character-were so thoroughly unlikeable that I wished the detective would arrest them all.

I struggled to remember the characters’ names, apart from the afore mentioned Nina, Conrad and Janice. Tanya and Amy are notable for their size being used as an allegation of laziness and sloth, as well as the reason Tanya’s husband walks out on her. This is a woman who has quite obviously disordered eating and needs therapy ,as she has inflicted her habits onto her daughter, but is instead passed off as a character defect because it is linked with her not liking sex. Hence her husband running off with a woman who has opinions and doesn’t use food as a panacea. And enjoys sex.

This is just one reader’s opinion, and I am in a minority I am sure because the author is well loved and respected, and I did like the way the curtain was pulled back on suburbia to find these people were every bit as awful as the ones they would cheerfully sneer at. The sense of comeuppance and destructive behaviour as their neat little lives implode was satisfying.

However, it just didn’t hit that sweet spot for me, although I am grateful for the chance to read this book, and for being able to have a proof, I just couldn’t connect with the characters. And without them, the story didn’t resonate with me. This is just to say that others will probably love it for all the reasons I listed above which is wonderful-anyone who command sales in the millions and get people reading, has my utmost respect! It just sadly was not quite the book for me.

About the author…

Lesley Pearse is one of the UK’s best-loved novelists with fans across the globe and sales of over 2 million copies of her books to date. A true storyteller and a master of gripping storylines that keep the reader hooked from beginning to end, Pearse introduces you to characters that it is impossible not to care about or forget.

There is no formula to her books or easily defined genre. Whether crime as in ‘Till We Meet Again’, historical adventure like ‘Never Look Back’, or the passionately emotive ‘Trust Me’, based on the true-life scandal of British child migrants sent to Australia in the post war period, she engages the reader completely.
Truth is often stranger than fiction and Lesley’s life has been as packed with drama as her books. She was three when her mother died under tragic circumstances. Her father was away at sea and it was only when a neighbour saw Lesley and her brother playing outside without coats on that suspicion was aroused – their mother had been dead for some time.

With her father in the Royal Marines, Lesley and her older brother spent three years in grim orphanages before her father remarried – a veritable dragon of an ex army nurse – and Lesley and her older brother were brought home again, to be joined by two other children who were later adopted by her father and stepmother, and a continuing stream of foster children.

The impact of constant change and uncertainty in Lesley’s early years is reflected in one of the recurring themes in her books: what happens to those who are emotionally damaged as children. It was an extraordinary childhood and in all her books, Lesley has skilfully married the pain and unhappiness of her early experiences with a unique gift for storytelling.

Links-http://www.lesleypearse.com/

Twitter @midaspr @MichaelJBooks