Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
Arlo Griffin, a happy innocent man of 34 with a mental age of eight, is fatally stabbed in a park in Tunbridge Wells.
Outrage is one’s own reaction to such a crime but his sister Storm is victim rather than reader and so stricken with grief and guilt that two years later she is having panic attacks as she suspects that she is being observed by a hidden stalker.
The police counsellors appointed after the murder try to convince her that she is hallucinating, a ploy that is partially successful until, facing her terror head-on, she revisits the scene of Arlo’s murder only to witness another violent stabbing. She escapes, brings police to the place and there is no sign of an attack: no blood, no fibres, no disturbed vegetation.
Her counsellors’ thinking is “paranoia” but Storm sees herself as a target, alone and vulnerable; her mother dead, her barrister father inaccessible in South Africa, but at this moment a good neighbour steps into the breach. Leah Murdoch is a former cop who resigned, disenchanted with the force, and now is looking for an occupation, something to fill the void. Befriending Storm, drawing out her story, she senses a real presence haunting the woman, something tangible, human. Storm is not imagining stuff; Leah has seen it all, she knows stuff happens.
Together they go to the park, to the scene of the crime(s). They find a blood-soaked bedsheet in a refuse bin. Analysed, it’s found to be fake blood. The uniformed cops turn suspicious eyes on the renegade. Undaunted Leah sets up a white board, using her flat as an incident room.
Storm’s own flat is entered with no sign of force but she can account for all the keys. Her stalker is emerging, announcing himself, but who is it who has her in his sights, and why is he warning her? Leah interrogates her and uncovers the trouble at the college where she teaches. There is a malicious student, a boorish tutor, a new boss who maintains that stress is affecting her teaching. The spiteful student files a complaint of bullying against Storm.
Her father remains incommunicado in Africa. At home Leah turns up a reference to blackmail at some point in his career, to be followed by a fascinating and unofficial note that the blackmail problem had been “settled amicably”. As the past intrudes, along with the family connection characters start to look like suspects in search of a murder. But so far there is no murder apart from the first. Does that figure then, another piece to join the pattern? Storm goes it alone, is herself accused of stalking, and slowly and cumbersome the story grinds to its inevitable conclusion.
There is an enormous amount of padding. The plot is woolly, and profoundly disappointing after that promising prologue. Arlo is a fine character but a shooting star: a sweeping flash and he’s gone. No one else excites our sympathy, and the book ends with the cosiest of epilogues: the kiss of death.
