The Girl Next Door

It’s tragic when a sweet, innocent, beautiful 16-year-old girl is murdered and left, bloody, in a town’s buttercup-filled woodland. The effect on the ‘Stepford Wives’ of Ashdon is electric. There is the obvious suspect, fuelled by rumour, and a trail of potential alternatives, but the clues are confusing. The Detective assigned to the case, Sergeant Madeleine Shaw, has a tough job on her hands as she lives in the town.

Ashdon is a microcosm of small-town Middle England. Gossip and rumours run wild, the men go out to work while the women join a Book Group and the PTA, and pursue a life of jealousies, back-biting, rivalry. Their secret foibles are often hidden from view. The schools try their best, but kids will be kids with all the problems of teenage youth. At every turn, DS Madeleine faces prejudices, based on perceived wealth, and a phalanx of warped personalities. The stage is set for an enthralling police procedural.

Phoebe Morgan as the blurb states, is an ex-journalist. She has an unerring eye and pen for her characters’ personalities and faults; no-one’s behaviour or attitude is left unturned and every human frailty and weakness is starkly highlighted. Her sharp-eyed descriptions bring Ashdon into three-dimensional life, but for the reader and the characters, this is unnerving and the thread of menace runs through every quickly-turned page.

The Girl Next Door is a profound, unhurried read, but it has a fast and exciting, controlled pace that follows the path of a psychologically disturbing plot that continues and builds to the very last page. I was left with the very uncomfortable feeling that this fictional story might have elements of truth.

I will see my happily-married neighbours in a new light. Perhaps in their seemingly ordinary lives they too have a Girl Next Door secret to hide?