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.
This one promises a traditional novel with the protagonist, Jenny Bowen, on the sleeper to Fort William; a night train that stops in the middle of Rannoch Moor. Going to the lavatory she finds a body in the doorway of the neighbouring compartment. Worse, the little girl who was with the dead woman the evening before is missing; but that’s a figment of Jenny’s imagination according to the police.
From murder disguised as an overdose to the disappearance of a child in the middle of the Highlands the story appears to become a police procedural complete with a fat lazy DI and his canny young sergeant who tends to believe Jenny’s story of what she saw last night.
So far so ordinary - although disappearances are always intriguing - but suddenly a hitman erupts onto the page, a somewhat familiar villain: tall, close-cropped, piercing eyes, long dark raincoat.
Predictably Jenny walks into the first of many situations with the reader murmuring the tired old warning: “Look behind you!” But of course she doesn’t; anyway there’s the attractive sergeant to help out, take leave, join forces, fall in love - and the plot becomes a cat and mouse game, with chases and desperate cornerings and escapes, escalating exponentially into yet more murder.
The climax comes in the Highlands. There’s a lot of blood-letting but no denouement because there’s nothing to explain. From the introduction of the hitman mystery morphed to a straight thriller: goodies versus baddies – oh yes, and a little girl caught in the cross-fire.
Dull and eminently predictable.
A frustrating book, its climaxes turning into damp squibs. Its promises unfulfilled, one has the impression that halfway the author got bored and if that happens the reader doesn’t stand a chance.
