This psychological thriller is by the author of The Girl Before which I had read and enjoyed last year and it has had many good reviews.
The story centres around Claire, a British drama student in New York who is asked to take on the role of her life in an attempt to entrap a suspect (Patrick) in a murder case. A suspect she had met before whilst working with a firm of divorce lawyers posing as a pick up in hotel bars to entrap cheating husbands.
But is the role she is being asked to play by the police as simple as it sounds? Is Patrick a cheating husband or is he a murderer? Or have the police indeed got it all wrong?
Claire is a strong, but needy character, and as the novel progressed I found myself more and more involved in what she did; willing her not to put her life in danger and do what appeared to be reckless things.
This novel is a great read, but if you are not a fan of graphic descriptions of sexual violence then this may not be the book for you. This book has as one of its central themes the poetry of Baudelaire, particularly Les Fleurs du Mal (which coincidentally was the first work I studied as part of my French degree) and some of the poems contain a high degree of brutality.
The thread of Baudelaire worked well with the main themes of the novel and the ending was both expected and unexpected at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment