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.
Hannah was fourteen when her mother was murdered. Traumatised by grief and horror she had no support from her father who, overnight, became a broken man, while her brother, Reece, went up to Cambridge and never returned, his only contact the occasional letter to his sister.
No perpetrator was found and over the years the crime was forgotten except within the stricken family. Its members drifted apart: Reece to chase fame in television while Hannah ended up selling stationery in Brighton, and their father remained, a sad recluse, in the family home. Decades later, the now of the story, suspicions flare as Dad, demented and dying in hospital, mistakes Hannah for his own murdered wife and begs her forgiveness.
Weakened by a guilty secret herself, undermined by alcohol and a humiliating self-image, finally by the immediate concern for her father, Hannah appeals to her brother for help. Reece has become something of a soap star and is about to publish his autobiography. She attends a preliminary reading and finds that her brother has airbrushed his family from the record and produced a travesty. Confronted, Reece maintains that he has never deviated from his conviction that his father was a killer but no way is he going to jeopardize his career by even a whiff of scandal. He will retract nothing.
Her brother’s attitude is disturbing for Hannah has her own suspicions except that in her case they fluctuate between her father and Reece himself, not to speak of a lecherous neighbour. Obsessed by a compulsion to discover the truth she traces the cop who was in charge of the case. Retired now and crippled after a gangland shooting he is a plausible white knight: volatile but evidently honest, although no one in this novel is a paragon or a villain.
An arresting book and an enjoyable read, the characters rounded and carefully introduced. One knows where one is, at least in the first instance, and the past is an intriguing journey of discovery by way of Hannah: impulsive, silly, loyal, and subjected to horror rather than abuse. It’s a novel about guilt and guardians, about relationships, families and the people next door. A surprising debut.
