Judith Sullivan is a writer in London, originally from Baltimore. She is working on a crime series set in Paris. Fluent in French, she’s pretty good with English and has conversational Italian and German and 20+ years in Leeds improved her Yorkshire speak.
The title of the unusual book hints a character or characters might fall foul of the waters surrounding the Isle of Wight, where the novel is set.
Nobody actually drowns but there is death and mystery aplenty in Tide, much more so than the dust jacket would suggest. Eccentric middle-aged woman compiles crosswords and swims wild from remote location would normally trail that this is going to be a cozy of the oh-so-British variety.
Tide swims in much darker waters, however, what with murderous secrets, drug gangs and high-tech shenanigans all in the mix. We are introduced to Merry (from her family name Merriweather) as an isolated 50-something whose main occupation is putting together devilish crossword puzzles (one of which serves as a postscript). Merry’s main hobby is swimming in the wild and she seems to have few friends. Her parents are deceased and her best friend/neighbour Julia Manning has recently passed away so Merry spends much of her time alone.
The plot kicks off when Julia’s son Lucas, a godchild figure to Merry, vanishes. Recently married, Lucas was a cybersecurity expert working for a London company from the Isle. His older brother Sean is serving out a prison sentence linked to drug smuggling.
Merry has never left the island, we discover, and in order to help Lucas’ wife Alison figure out where her husband absconded to, she takes a boat to the mainland in the company of handsome private dick Gareth Jones. The detective has been hired by Lucas’s employer, the ominously named Sentient Security Systems, to track the errant staff member who was working on a top-secret project.
Following Merry’s maiden voyage to the Big Smoke is great fun for the reader, if not for our heroine. She finds it dirty and intimidating, a fine metaphor for the qualities of the quest to track down Lucas.
Her faltering romance with Jones is sensitively handled as we observe a woman slapped but not beaten by life, hesitantly creep out from her self-imposed shell. As the book plays out, we discover more of the detail to Merry’s delicate psychological equilibrium, which Merry herself links to her tendency to starve herself both of food and of love and connection. Author Lawton is aphantastic, which means she cannot from mental images of real or imagined things. I saw no sign of this in Merry but the heroine’s disconnect from her surroundings was apparent, both sad and intriguing.
The arc of the book is hopeful, however, in that Merry takes halting steps in embracing those around her who care. Mercenary, uncaring people also pepper the novel and some get their comeuppance. It is thrilling to navigate Merry’s journey in figuring out who is evil and who kind and whose motives have prompted which outcomes.
There is no indication a second Merry book is in the works but I for one would love to see her grapple with further conundrums and make up further crossword puzzles.
