Amy Myers is known for her short stories and historical novels featuring Victorian chef Auguste Didier and chimney sweep Tom Wasp. Her contemporary series feature ex-cop Peter Marsh and Daughter and classic car detective Jack Colby, and she is currently working on a new series starring Cara Shelley who runs a café in the grounds of stately home Tanton Towers.
Website: www.amymyers.net
I read the first six pages of On My Life and was about to put the book down. I’m so glad I didn’t. By page twelve this thriller had me hooked where I remained right through to the end on page 364.
Angela Clarke’s powerful novel tells its story in alternate time frames: ‘Now’ and ‘Then’. The first ‘Now’ of the novel sees protagonist Jenna slammed into a police van en-route from the courtroom to prison. She is charged with the hideous murder of her teenage stepdaughter Emily. To add to the mix, Robert Emily’s fiancé has gone missing.
No one will tell Jenna anything, she is thought to be a child-killer and can expect no mercy from her fellow inmates, the warders, or Robert’s family. Even her own family and friends’ distance themselves. And yet, she didn’t do it! She loved Emily. No one will believe her because all the evidence is against her, including the discovery of child pornography on her computer.
Jenna tells her own frightening backstory, as she wrestles with details of prison life. As she knows of her won innocence, questions burn inside; “who did kill Emily? And where is Robert?”
Day-by-day the ordeal goes on within her mind and within the agonies of prison life all compounded by her inability to get news, or uncover who murdered Emily.
The satisfying climax comes as a surprise.
