Andrew Gow, a notorious serial killer convicted of the vicious murders of five women, is released from jail when two murders identical to those he supposedly committed occur whilst he's locked up. He and his new wife, Donna McGovern, a woman who started writing to him when he was in jail, take a trip to an isolated part of Scotland. Donna disappears and Gow is found murdered. The person convicted of Gow's murder is Dr Susie Harriot, a well respected psychiatrist, who has been treating Gow whilst he was in jail
Susie Harriot's husband, Lachlan, is convinced that his wife can't have killed Gow and sets out to prove her innocence. He finds some files, press cuttings and computer records in her home office and starts laboriously going through them, piecing together the events that led to Susie's conviction. He is optimistic that the information he finds will clear Susie, but it actually raises many more questions than it answers.
The book is narrated by Lachlan Harriot in a series of diary entries, drawing heavily on the documentary evidence from Susie's trial, and from Gow's original conviction. Lachlan did not know Gow, but we get to see him through the newspaper clippings and the files on his background and time in jail. This makes for a very intriguing and involving plot, and I really enjoyed the combination of personal views and more supposedly factual evidence. The biases of both are clear to see, and the real truth remains hidden.
Sanctum looks at the multi-faceted relationships between Susie Harriot, Andrew Gow, and Donna McGovern and explores the reasons why some women strike up relationships with prisoners. Through Lachlan's often painfully honest diary of his discoveries and his feelings, the truth is gradually revealed, and the reader also gets a look at the mind of a rather smug man whose life has been turned upside down as he starts to doubt the innocence of his wife. Lachlan is, essentially, a rather selfish man and I found him quite unsympathetic but as a fictional character he's fascinating.
This is an extremely well-written book, with a completely different feel to
the Garnethill trilogy. The audio book is read by Jonathan Hackett and he makes
a marvellous job of it. I can still hear his voice in my head.
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Donna Moore
Denise Mina is the author of the Garnethill trilogy