Review: SISTERS OF MERCY, Carol Overington

• 
  This edition made available through Libby by my local library
  
• Published: 1 November 2012
• ISBN: 9781742750446
• Imprint: Random House Australia
• Format: EBook
• Pages: 320

Synopsis (publisher)

Sisters of Mercy by Caroline Overington is the haunting crime novel story of two sisters - one has vanished, the other is behind bars...

Snow Delaney was born a generation and a world away from her sister, Agnes.

Until recently, neither even knew of the other's existence. They came together only for the reading of their father's will - when Snow discovered, to her horror, that she was not the sole beneficiary of his large estate.

Now Snow is in prison and Agnes is missing, disappeared in the eerie red dust that blanketed Sydney from dawn on September 23, 2009.

With no other family left, Snow turns to crime journalist Jack Fawcett, protesting her innocence in a series of defiant letters from prison. Has she been unfairly judged? Or will Jack's own research reveal a story even more shocking than the one Snow wants to tell?

With Sisters of Mercy Caroline Overington once again proves she is one of the most exciting new novelists of recent years.

My Take

I was amazed to find, when I began structuring this review, that I had actually read this book 10 years ago (see my original review here) but I honestly had no recollection of it.

The main story is told by two main narrators. One is Snow Delaney who is in jail for cruelty to disabled children, and is suspected of having somehow disposed of her missing sister. Snow denies knowing anything about that, but in the the light of what we learn about what she has done to children in her foster care, how reliable is she as a narrator? The other narrator is Jack "Tap" Fawcett, a journalist who has been following the disappearance of Agnes Moore, and with whom Snow begins a correspondence when she is in jail. In the letters to Fawcett Snow fills in her back story and tries to convince him of her innocence. Fawcett is unequivocal in his belief that Snow has had something to with her sister's disappearance, but how reliable a narrator is he?

(Date discrepancy

Text in the novel says John Moore went to Oxford in 1930 at age of 20, and that he was picked for the Melbourne Olympics in athletics in 1956. That would make him 46 then. Surely he must have been at Oxford later than that? Something like 1954? 

Agnes Moore met her husband John in Western Australia in 1958 when she was 17, and she was born in 1940. When she disappeared in 2009 she was 69.)

This was an interesting read, particularly the details of how Snow "managed" the "care" of 19 disabled children. It makes you wonder how much based on fact those details are.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

4.4, SISTERS OF MERCY
4.5, NO PLACE LIKE HOME
4.7, I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE
4.5, CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
4.5, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
4.7, THE ONES YOU TRUST