Connie attempts to expose him. Harwood’s increasingly violent responses culminate in her kidnapping as she attempts to flee Iraq. He subjects her to a carefully calibrated series of tortures and sexual humiliations. After three days, he releases her. Terrorised into holding her tongue, Connie refuses to talk about her ordeal and takes refuge in England. At first the media and the police assume that Islamic terrorists kidnapped her; but as her silence continues, they suspect her disappearance was no more than a publicity stunt. Clearly traumatised, she refuses treatment.
Under an assumed name, she rents a large, decaying house in the depths of Dorset and waits, sick with fear, for Harwood to track her down and finish the job he began. But her new neighbours have their problems, too — a grimly Gothic family feud going back for generations whose outcome depends on an old woman dying of Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. Connie cannot avoid becoming entangled with some of the locals. There’s Jess, a waiflike young woman who fears friendship, owns a pack of slavering but endearing mastiffs and runs a farm of more than 1,000 acres with casual competence. The local GP is an engaging philanderer with a heart. Madeleine, the glamorous daughter of the house’s owner, is introduced as a bitch of the first water and grows steadily worse as the novel progresses.
In the hands of a lesser writer, such a heady combination of story-lines could easily have lurched into absurdity. True, it’s a rich mixture — imagine a contemporary version of Rogue Male, as rewritten by Daphne du Maurier. Though the plot has a tendency towards rococo elaboration, the research is reassuringly solid, which lends authenticity to its less plausible elements, and its underlying themes are timeless. Sly stabs of wit vary the tone.
Psychologically, Walters never puts a foot wrong. The novel revolves around two strong but damaged women, Connie and Jess, who need to find their own ways of healing themselves if they are to survive. The result is a thriller that really does thrill — partly because we care about its protagonists, and partly because Minette Walters has an enormous talent for old-fashioned story-telling.
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