Review: LET ME LIE, Clare Mackintosh

• this edition published by Sphere in 2018
• ISBN 978-0-7515-6487-7
• 390 pages
• source: my local library
• author website

Synopsis (author website)

The police say it was suicide.
Anna says it was murder.
They’re both wrong.

One year ago, Caroline Johnson chose to end her life brutally: a shocking suicide planned to match that of her husband just months before. Their daughter, Anna, has struggled to come to terms with their loss ever since.

Now with a young baby of her own, Anna misses her mother more than ever and starts to ask questions about her parents’ deaths. But by digging up the past, is she putting her future in danger? Sometimes it’s safer to let things lie . . .

My Take

Anna Johnson is a wealthy young woman, a young mother, with a baby just 2 months old, conceived after her mother dies. The father of her daughter is the grief counsellor she saw after her mother died.

In the last 18 months both her father and her mother have committed suicide by jumping off Beachy Head, with her mother's death apparently a copycat of her father's. Now, 12 months to the day, Anna gets a card in the post questioning whether her mother's death was suicide.

She reports to the card to the police, to Murray, an ex-detective now assisting at the police station as a civilian. Murray remembers the suicides, seven months apart, and decides to do a little investigation of his own.

The structure of the book builds the suspense, with several points of view: Anna's, Murray's and then an unidentified voice who appears to be one of the suicides. Anna becomes convinced that someone is telling her that her mother was murdered, possibly her father too.

Very readable.

My Rating: 4.4

I've also read 4.6, I LET YOU GO