Famous Last Words

When this was published last year it received rave reviews from critics and other authors. In my opinion, Gillian McAllister’s last three or four books have all been high-rankers, but this one definitely deserves 5 Stars. The story hooks you in and just doesn’t let go.

The main protagonist in this is Camilla, a happily married woman with a 9-month-old baby. In 2017 she’s about to start back at work as a literary agent after her maternity leave. Very early that morning she vaguely senses her husband, Luke, kissing her goodbye before he himself leaves for work. Later, as she gets ready to go to work herself, she glimpses on the news a story about a siege, where a gunman is holding three people hostage at gunpoint. And Luke is not one of the hostages, but the man the holding the gun. Cam, shellshocked, watches and then must deal with hostile police as they come to question her.

This is the first strand of the story. The second is about Niall, the hostage negotiator, who gets scrambled to deal with this rapidly unfolding situation. He manages to establish a very limited contact and feels there is scope for negotiation, so he holds back his colleagues, who are raring to go in and shoot. But he’s wrong. Soon after one of the hostages (a woman) is released, two shots ring out and when the police enter, they find two men, blindfolded, who have been shot execution-style. Luke is gone.

Fast-forward to 2024. The case is on the back burner; the two victims have never been identified; and there have never been any sightings of Luke. Camilla is now a single mother of a 7-year-old, back at work and she has taken her maiden name. Superficially she's moved on and is trying to get Luke officially declared dead, but deep down she still misses him desperately and still hopes he will turn up one day. Niall, the hostage negotiator, who lost his marriage, his job and the respect of his colleagues because of his misjudgement, still follows the case closely and is starting to think there is more to it that meets the eye.

The police still have a trace on Camilla’s phone to see if she gets any communications from her vanished husband. So, when a cryptic message arrives and is intercepted, first the police, then Camilla herself goes to the rendezvous point. But no sightings. From then on, the story takes us down some pretty dark and rather unexpected avenues before reaching a satisfactory ending.

My verdict
This is a well written story. The descriptive prose is beautiful, very evocative. And the image which Gillian McAllister creates of Camilla is deeply moving. Here is a woman who has not been able to move on, who is bewildered by events and is still trying to figure out what happened. The crime itself (and it isn’t quite what you might think) is grim, hard, shocking – and very believable.

Only slowly does the reader begin to understand what happened and why. The clues are there all the time, but we follow them at the same pace as Camilla, which heightens the tension, because it constantly makes us doubt our own conclusions. Gillian McAllister has been really clever in the way she has laid everything out, just drip-feeding us enough to keep us on the hook.

I don’t want to spoil anything for you so I won’t say anything more. But do read it, because it’s well worth it.
Review by: Freyja, Oundle Crime