Dirty Little Secrets: a gripping thriller of lies, privilege, secrets and betrayal
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By Jo Spain
avg rating
1 review
‘Dark, funny, well-plotted, sinister. Superb’ WILL DEAN
Guilt lies close to home . . .
In the exclusive gated community of Withered Vale, people’s lives appear as perfect as their beautifully manicured lawns. Money, success, privilege – the residents have it all. Life is good.
There’s just one problem.
Olive Collins’ dead body has been rotting inside number four for the last three months. Her neighbours say they’re shocked at the discovery but nobody thought to check on her when she vanished from sight.
The police start to ask questions and the seemingly flawless façade begins to crack. Because, when it comes to Olive’s neighbours, it seems each of them has something to hide, something to lose and everything to gain from her death.
PRAISE FOR JO SPAIN
‘Loved, loved, loved’ Caz Frear
‘Sensational’ Chris Whitaker
‘I absolutely loved it’ Liz Nugent
‘You certainly look at your neighbours with fresh eyes after reading this’ Yours
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Withered Vale is a gated community comprising seven houses and a random collection of fairly well-to-do residents who radiate veneers of respectability and like to keep themselves to themselves. All that is, except Olive who has a reputation for being a bit of a busybody. When Olive is discovered in a putrefied state, having been lying dead in her house for three months, the police descend in force and a detailed enquiry starts. It soon becomes evident that the circumstances surrounding Olive’s death may be suspicious and that nobody in the community is heartbroken over her death. They say that “everyone has a story to tell”, and in this community there are certainly plenty of skeletons hidden in closets. Frank Brazil and Emma Child are in charge of the investigation and they have their work cut out finding the skeletons and fitting the whole jigsaw together.
This is a very cleverly constructed novel. We are gradually drip fed facts about all the individuals involved but not until the end do we have a whole picture. The residents lives, both past and present, may be a little more extreme than the average, but I can forgive a certain amount of poetic licence. It is structured in a fairly unique way as Olive herself is one of the narrators, despite no longer being with us. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the main characters who alternately step into the spotlight, but all write in the third person apart from Olive, who tells her own story in the first person. All the residents were developed well as individuals and came across as plausible, believable and, mostly, likeable. As psychological thrillers go, I found this one particularly gripping.
My only problem with the book was actually its complexity. Bizarrely this was also one of the things I liked about it but I did find that, on a number of occasions, I was getting the neighbours muddled up with each other and was also forgetting pertinent facts about their life stories that became relevant later on. This led to a certain amount of confusion but although I was tempted to downgrade it from 5 stars to 4 stars, it was just too good a book for that.
I have never come across Jo Spain before, but if this book is typical of her others, I shall certainly be looking out for more of them.
