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
‘Two girls went in, only one came out’ is the theme of Vanessa Savage’s second psychological thriller, after her well received debut novel, The Woman in the Dark. The Woods is an amazing achievement.
With a basic ‘onstage’ cast of only seven, it manages to keep the tension going continuously throughout 385 pages as to who was responsible for the death of one of the girls, with all the cast inextricably bound up in the same episode that caused the tragedy. Divided into sections of ‘Now’ and ‘Then’, one of the novel’s tactical strengths is that the time periods are split at longer intervals than some multi-period novels with the result that the tension rises smoothly.
Tess, the narrator, is the younger of the two girls. Bella, her sister, was found dead in the grounds of Dean House, the now uninhabited house a few miles from their home, after their father’s wedding ten years earlier. Tess was then sixteen to Bella’s eighteen years. Bella had insisted on their going into the woods of Dean House, despite the fact that they had both drunk too much. The bride was Julia, who had lived at Dean House with Greg Lewis, and this marriage to their father was far from welcome to Tess and Bella. Bella’s death was put down to accident – but Tess isn’t convinced. She believes Bella was killed, but the vital clue is missing: Tess remembers going into the woods but not how Bella came to die or she to lie unconscious close by her.
Now, unwillingly called back to her home because Julia is dying, Tess, still badly affected by the events of that night, is plunged back into facing the past by meeting again all those equally affected by what happened that night, reawakening memories of all its loves, horrors and tragedies. Whom can Tess trust, when their characters and her feelings for them are constantly changing?
Tess carries the novel splendidly as narrator, and though I don’t as a rule enjoy novels written in the present tense, this novel was an exception, helping not hindering the pace. Full marks to Vanessa Savage for this second gripping thriller and when I’ve got my breath back from this one, I’ll begin looking forward to the third.
